Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Gov. Jay Inslee (D-WA) said President Donald Trump is urging both “insubordination” and “illegal activity” by encouraging protests of stay-at-home orders amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Host George Stephanopoulos said, “You’ve seen those tweets from the president, liberate Michigan, liberate Virginia. You believe that’s dangerous?”
Inslee said, “I don’t know any other way to characterize it when we have an order from governors both Republicans and Democrats that are basically designed to protect people’s health, literally their lives, to have a president of the United States basically encourage insubordination, to encourage illegal activity. These orders actually are the law of these states. And again, these are not just Democrats. These are Republican-led states as well. To have an American president to encourage people to violate the law. I can’t remember any time in my time in America we have seen such a thing.”
Hew continued, “It is dangerous because it could inspire people to ignore things that could save their lives. And I don’t know if there is another way to characterize it. And it’s doubly frustrating to us governors because this is such a schizophrenia. The president is asking people, please ignore Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx, please ignore my own guidelines I set forth. Those guidelines made very clear if you read them, and I don’t know if the president did or not, but if you read them, it made very clear that you can’t open up Michigan today or Virginia under those guidelines, you need to see a decline in infections and fatalities. So, yes, we hope that there could be a restoration of leadership in the White House rather than hobbling our national efforts to protect people from this terrible virus.”
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