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Donald Trump has shut down the celebration of part of the 2020 Republican National Convention in Jacksonville, saying that an increase in coronavirus cases in Florida means that “the time for this event is not right.”
The president said the Republican delegates will meet in Charlotte and that he will still give a speech accepting the Republican nomination. That address, he said vaguely, will be given “in a different forum.”
“The Florida outbreak … to have a big convention is not the right time,” he said during his revived daily coronavirus briefing. “I have to protect the American people.”
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“They said, ‘Sir, we can make this work very easily,'” Trump said.
The president seemed eager to earn political points at the expense of his “political team,” and said he was briefed on plans for the Florida part of the Republican convention.
“I said, there is nothing more important than keeping our people safe, either from the China virus or the … mob,” he said, using his terms for the coronavirus that originates in the Asian country and for protesters who they took to the streets. to ask for racial justice after the police murder of George Floyd.
After canceling a large chunk of their North Carolina convention and then moving it to Jacksonville for a divided event, Trump and the RNC are now moving what they can withhold to the Queen City.
Trump clashed with North Carolina Democratic Governor Roy Cooper when the state leader dealt with the outbreak of the virus and said the Republican Party could not hold a full convention in Charlotte.
“The delegates will go to North Carolina and make the nomination vote,” Trump said, saying that his campaign and the RNC will also do “tele-rallies and whatnot … we are discussing.”
“I will still make a convention speech in different forums,” he added. “But we will not have a large and crowded convention.”
The Charlotte portion will be, he said, “relatively quick.”
“It can’t be like our last convention,” he said. “We will have something very good.”
But during his mostly prepared opening remarks, he again emphasized that he wants all US schools to open in the fall.
He did not explain the contradiction of protecting convention attendees, but he still contends that children and teachers would be safe in classrooms.
However, some American and global health experts say children ages 10-19 can pass the virus on to others, even if they never feel sick.
Once again, he argued that the virus disappears “quickly,” even as a list of Sun Belt states continues to record seven-day and daily historical highs of confirmed cases and deaths.
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