United States President Donald Trump walks to the White House residence after leaving Marine One at South Lawn on June 25, 2020 in Washington, DC.
Drew Angerer | fake pictures
President Donald Trump canceled a planned trip to New Jersey on Friday after a new order forcing visitors to the Garden Staten quarantine after being in states with an increasing number of coronavirus cases.
Trump was scheduled to fly Air Force One on Friday afternoon to Morristown, NJ, and then planned to stay the weekend at his golf course in Bedminster, NJ
Governor Phil Murphy had told CNBC earlier that day that his quarantine order would not have applied to Trump, because “by any definition, the President of the United States is an essential worker.”
White House spokesman Judd Deere did not immediately respond when asked why the trip was canceled.
Two days ago, Deere said Trump still planned to go to New Jersey despite Muprhy’s order directing visitors who have been in states with high numbers of coronavirus cases to remain in quarantine for 14 days.
Murphy’s order reflected identical directives issued this week by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont.
Trump traveled to Arizona on Tuesday for an event at a church. Arizona has an increasing number of Covid-19 cases.
“The President of the United States is not a civilian,” Deere said Wednesday.
“Anyone very close to him, including staff, guests and the press, is tested for COVID-19 and confirmed to be negative,” Deere said at the time.
“With respect to Arizona, the White House followed its COVID mitigation plan to ensure that the President did not contact anyone who had symptoms or had not been tested.”
“Anyone traveling in support of the president this weekend will be closely monitored for symptoms and given a COVID test.”
Murphy’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s cancellation.
But Murphy, during a previous interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box”, spoke about Trump’s then-scheduled visit, which the governor said would not conflict with his quarantine order.
“There is a separation for essential workers, and by any definition, the President of the United States is an essential worker, so the President is obviously welcome in New Jersey,” Murphy said.
On Thursday, Trump visited the Fincantieri Marinette marine shipyard in Marinette, Wisconsin, where he commented on a multi-million dollar contract for the installation to a cheering crowd.
During that appearance, Trump repeated a claim that the US is seeing an increase in coronavirus cases because it is testing more extensively than other nations.
“We have the best testing program in the world. We have developed it over a period of time. And we have almost 30 million tests,” Trump said.
“That means we will have more cases. If we did not want to do the test, or if we did not, we would not have cases. But we have cases because we do it. Deaths have decreased. We have one of the lowest death rates.”
The United States has had more than 2.4 million cases reported by Covid-19 and 124,468 related deaths. The number of cases and deaths in the United States represents 25% of the total number of cases and deaths worldwide.
– Additional reports from CNBC’s Tucker Higgins
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