CNN’s Jake Tapper said President Donald Trump’s positive coronavirus diagnosis made him a symbol of his failures of “recklessness, ignorance, recklessness” on Sunday’s broadcast of “State of the Union.”
Tapper said, “The Americans who don’t listen to science or medicine who think masks are too intrusive, who pack bars, who willfully risk spreading the virus, you are making it worse for all of us. You are extending how long this pandemic will last. And it is tragic to say, many, if not most, of you, are taking your cues from the leader of the free world. Last weekend at an event held both inside and outside but with no masks required and no distancing, President Trump introduced his Supreme Court nominee. So far, at least eight attendees of that event have tested positive for the virus. Look at Senator Mike Lee at this event. My God. How are future generations going to make sense of these images of the Republican leaders of the nation acting like this during a once in a century pandemic with more than 200,000 Americans dead?”
He continued, “I wish every one of these leaders, Senator Lee, President Trump, Kellyanne Conway, Chris Christie, I wish you all a full and speedy recovery. Do you not see? It’s not just through failed leadership or setting bad examples. You are all now literally risking spreading the virus yourselves. The president and his team have been behaving as if the pandemic is over. This callous indifference to the well being of the citizens the president swore to protect. It’s no longer just theoretical, well, they might get the virus. After finding out Hope Hicks, a top aide with whom the president had been in close contact after learning she was sick with the virus and actually showing symptoms, the president flew to a fundraiser in New Jersey and mingled. Did anyone in the White House around the Trump campaign consider at all the housekeepers and bartenders at Bedminster, the Naval aviators who flew them there on Air Force One, the young interns or old donors with whom the president came in contact? Anyone? Anyone at all?”
Tapper concluded, “I wish you all health and recovery and a long life, but we have to note the tragedy here. It is horrible and awful and profound. Sick and in isolation, Mr. President, you have become a symbol of your own failures, failures of recklessness, ignorance, recklessness. The same failures you have been inflicting on the rest of us. Get well, and please, for the rest of us who don’t get to go to Walter Reed, get well and get it together.”
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