CNN’s Borger on COVID Risk of Trump Speech v. Protests: Trump’s Speech ‘Is on the Lawn of the White House’

During CNN’s coverage of the 2020 Republican National Convention on Thursday, CNN Chief Political Analyst Gloria Borger stated that President Trump’s speech at the White House might make people feel like their sacrifices to fight the coronavirus were in vain and argued that the speech is different from the protests that took place over the summer because the speech took place on the lawn of the White House.

Borger said, “First of all, let me start, and following my colleagues about what they’ve been saying about the picture of this event, without masks, without distancing, and somehow, you’re sitting at home and you know what your life is like every day. You can’t go out without a mask. You are worried about whether your children can go to school. You may have lost your job. And with this occurring at the White House, as if it were an alternate universe, you have to sort of say, doesn’t this make people feel like their sacrifices have been for nothing? Are people worried that there is going to be some super-spreader event at the White House, perhaps?”

Host Anderson Cooper responded that Republicans will say that there were “huge, massive protests across the country over the course of the summer and people weren’t wearing masks, or even if they were.”

Borger responded, “Fine. This is on the lawn. This is on the lawn of the White House. And we can go over the question of whether it should have been there or should not have been there, but this is on the lawn of the White House. This is a president and a vice president who have a Coronavirus Task Force, which was not consulted about this event, as our reporting shows. So, you know, you have to have that picture.”

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