Trump put Pence, the former governor of Indiana, in charge of overseeing the coronavirus after he spent months as governor rejecting a needle exchange program contributing to the spread of HIV. In recent press interview, he’s done little to ease public health fears. In an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper, Pence explained away his misidentification of a man who had died of the coronavirus as a woman by blaming a "miscommunication" following his CDC briefing. The vice president went on to explain that it "doesn't lessen the tragedy at all."

"And again our hearts go out to that man's family and his friends in that community," Pence said. He talked about having added personnel to a White House task force including one of the leading experts in infectious diseases, and he said more than 15,000 testing kits were released this weekend, with officials working to send another 50,000 kits out. "So we're addressing it," he said in explaining why the United States is behind other countries regarding providing coronavirus test kits.

x This is Pence trying to mislead the public. "Screening" is not "testing"



PENCE: We've actually done a fair amount of testing



MARIA BARTIROMO: 500 tests?



PENCE: We've actually screened 47K people coming through designated airports in the country and done testing at airports https://t.co/rdWgYDhPla — Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) March 1, 2020

Pence also called for people to "set the politics aside and work the problem” in his interview with Tapper. He said that’s happening, "with the exception of some barbs being thrown by some of the predictable voices in the public debate on the left." His statements followed claims from Donald Trump Jr. Friday that Democrats are using anything they can to hurt Trump, including hoping the coronavirus "kills millions of people so that they can end Donald Trump's streak of winning.”

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