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PHOENIX: President Donald Trump admitted on Tuesday (May 5) that more Americans will die by reopening the U.S. economy, but underscored his insistence on a diminishing threat of coronavirus by refusing to wear a mask, even when he visited a manufacturing factory. of masks.
When asked by ABC News if a lifting of the social distancing measures and the reopening of the closed economy would lead to more deaths, Trump said: “There may be some.”
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“Because they won’t lock him up in an apartment or a house or whatever,” said Trump at the Honeywell factory in Phoenix, Arizona, which he visited on his first major trip since the coronavirus blockade began.
“Will some people be seriously affected? Yes,” he previously admitted at the factory. “But we have to open our country.”
READ: White House is looking at shrinking coronavirus task force, says Pence
Trump’s November re-election campaign is recovering from the massive shutdown ordered to try to stop the spread of the virus, which has already killed 70,000 Americans and is predicted to take tens of thousands more lives.
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Praising the Honeywell workers, who produce masks used by medical personnel and other first responders, Trump reiterated that it is time to look to the future.
“I want to be a cheerleader,” she said.
Reinforcing that change in direction, the White House said Trump’s emergency coordination group for the pandemic would dissolve, probably in early June.
NON-PRESIDENTIAL MASKS?
Trump’s Honeywell audience sat masked in compliance with the US government’s recommendations. USA And his own company rule, which was clearly displayed on a sign in the facility that said, “Please wear your mask at all times.”
Trump scoffed when he left Washington that after months of resistance he could finally cover his face.
The fact that he missed the opportunity to make a security statement was in line with his new focus on getting Americans back to work.
And he’s been skeptical about masks from the start.
White House medical experts and even First Lady Melania Trump promote the masks as a crucial tool in the fight against viral spread.
But the president, closely tuned to his loyal right-wing base, has used his enormous visibility to minimize the need.
“I think wearing a face mask when greeting presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens, I don’t know,” he said in April, apparently suggesting that a mask would not be presidential. “Somehow, I don’t see it for myself.”
ALTERNATIVE FACTS
The moment of the Trump mask in Arizona came after his vice president, Mike Pence, caused an uproar a week ago when he was photographed without a mask during a visit to the famous Mayo Clinic hospital in Rochester, Minnesota, which requires that visitors cover themselves.
Pence, unusually for a member of the Trump administration, publicly admitted that he was wrong.
“I didn’t think it was necessary, but I should have worn a mask,” he said Sunday.
On a later trip, Pence wore a mask.
READ: Trump urges China to reveal everything about the origin of the coronavirus
The White House says that because top officials and their guests are frequently screened for coronaviruses, they generally don’t need to follow the guide.
However, the controversy runs deeper, reflecting a dispute over events that have turned swaths of the United States into fields where left and right see different basic realities.
A health worker takes a sample from a mobile resident to test for coronavirus at CHA Somerville Hospital in Somerville, Massachusetts. REUTERS / Brian Snyder
Polls show Democrats support facial coverage as a sign of shared responsibility, while some Republicans see orders to wear masks as a major government threat to individual freedom.
Trump-backed groups protesting the coronavirus blockade, sometimes ostentatiously brandishing firearms and parading in paramilitary attire, appear to be going unmasked to an act of political independence.
In Stillwater, Oklahoma, and other cities, local leaders abandoned orders to wear masks after threats of violence.
A common slogan in protests now is that the entire pandemic is a “hoax”.
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