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DONALD Trump has announced he plans to hold "25,000-person rallies" before November's election - and told reporters he doesn’t think mass coronavirus testing "is necessary."
The president made the comments during a meeting with top industry executives at the White House Wednesday - after the COVID-19 infection rate in the US topped one million.
After discussing the phased reopening of the country, Trump touted the strides the Feds have made in terms of diagnostics, ventilators, PPE, and potential treatments.
"You don't hear about ventilators, you don't hear about masks, and you shouldn't be hearing about testing, but that's the last thing [the media] can complain about I guess," he told reporters.
"That's like a dream for the media. But we've done incredible with the testing and you'll see over the coming weeks.
"I don't know that all that [testing] is even necessary."
The Coronavirus Task Force, medics, and state officials alike have repeatedly emphasized the need for testing when it comes to reopening the country and getting people back to work.
Trump incorrectly claimed the US had conducted more testing than "all countries put together."
Worldometers.com, a site tracking global testing for the disease, shows Russia, Germany and Italy have done more combined tests of 7.29 million versus America's 6.03 million tests as of April 29.
This tracker also indicates that some 25 million tests were performed by 172 other countries.
When asked about his personal feelings about getting back to normal, Trump claimed he had "been at the White House now for many months, and I would like to get out" after his trip to Mar-a-Lago in March.
The president also said he hoped to hold his "good old-fashioned 25,000-person rallies" in the "not too distant future."
After announcing trips to Arizona and Ohio, Trump he couldn't imagine people sitting feet apart to mitigate the spread at his political rallies in the coming months.
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Trump said this was primarily because it "wouldn't look too good" if less people attended.
He said social distancing safety measures could also negatively impact the atmosphere of restaurants, claiming the country would be "100 percent" open rather than adapting to a new normal.
The president said some states are "in great shape" while others, like hard-hit New York, were on the "other side of the curve" and "heading south very quickly."
"I think you're going to see some big things happening," the president said. "But this is going away and when it's gone we're gonna be doing a lot of things."
Trump wasn't clear on how exactly the deadly bug would "go away" before a vaccine was made available but referenced the fact federal drug trials of remdisivir has yielded some hopeful results.
"It's gonna go," he insisted. "It's gonna leave. It's gonna be gone. It's gonna be eradicated."
Earlier, Dr Fauci cited results which show that at least 50 percent of patients treated with remdesivir improved and were quickly released from the hospital.
When one journalist highlighted the significant impact the COVID lockdowns had on mitigating the spread, Trump conceded "maybe that's it" in terms of eliminating the killer virus.
But he again emphasized that Americans were frustrated and eager to get back to work as the death toll neared 60,000 this week.
Trump said the fatalities would have been a lot worse if it were not for the government intervention, referencing the body bags and makeshift morgues in NYC's Elmhurst hospital in Queens.
The news comes after he confirmed social distancing measures would not be extended and "faded out" from Thursday.
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The president later slammed the concept of sanctuary cities when a reporter asked if he would be withholding aid from them.
These localities make it harder for ICE and the Feds to track down undocumented immigrants they deem deportable and also object to the prolonged detention of these people.
"I don't see helping cities and states if they're going to be sanctuary, because all sanctuary means to me is protecting a lot of criminals," Trump said. "We don't want criminals from other countries protected."
