U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he answers a question during the daily coronavirus task force briefing at the White House in Washington, U.S., April 21, 2020. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Trump offered a total lie when he claimed that the US could fight the coronavirus if it resurged in the fall without shutting down states and economies.
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The exchange:
Reporter: I have a question, we got data from Tokyo, an increase of cases, and double of the cases in Singapore. We’ve been looking a lot at Europe after China, and then we’re back into this area of the world. Here we’re getting a plateau and then cases going down. Any lessons to take out of what’s happening in this area in Asia, after having put our attention somewhere else for so long?
Trump: We have to be careful, we have to be very careful. We don’t want that to happen. It could happen. I think we stamp it out if it does happen. We’re not going to be doing any mass closings, I hope. We could — what I call burning embers, and we put them out, and I think we’ve gotten very good at that. We’ll see. But we don’t want that to happen.
Reporter: Mr. President, once the reopening happens, we won’t need to go back into reclosing?
We don’t want to do that. You don’t want to do that. Nobody in this room wants to do that.
Video:
Even though his attorney general is threatening to sue states who keep restriction on, Trump has no power to stop a state from shutting down again.
Trump is also selling the lie that the coronavirus is going to go away, and he will be able to stomp it out as it flares up in spots. The reality is that cases of the virus are only down because of stay at home orders and social distancing. As soon as restrictions are lifted, the number of cases will increase.
The same dynamic has played out in other countries that have lifted restrictions, and those countries had better and more accessible testing. States are opening up too soon and it is going to lead to disaster.
For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
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