On Wednesday’s broadcast of “CNN Tonight,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) stated that President Trump’s coronavirus address to the nation “is helpful. But I wish he’d done this weeks ago.”

Beyer said, “It is helpful. But I wish he’d done this weeks ago. We had all this speech where he was saying this is a Democratic or a liberal hoax, that people who are sick can go to work, don’t worry about it. We see how seriously the universities are taking this now, how Italy’s in a total lockdown. It’s not clear what a travel ban will do when we already have a thousand Americans sick, and that number could double in the next day or two, and double every couple of days. Right now, we have to really focus on making sure that we don’t have the community spread within the United States.”

He added that “somebody in the executive branch, in January, deferred and rejected the World Health Organization tests that were made available to us. Germany offered to help us, too. Somehow, we decided we could do it on our own, and so, we’re weeks behind.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett