CNN’s Jake Tapper critiqued President Donald Trump‘s tweet urging Americans not to be afraid of coronavirus on Monday’s broadcast of “The Lead.”
Tapper said, “I want to take a second here. President Trump wrote on Twitter: ‘Don’t be afraid of COVID. Don’t let it dominate your life.’ Almost 210,000 Americans are dead from this disease. Meaning hundreds of thousands of people in this country are morning. Oh, look at that we just reached 210,000 since I’ve been on air. 210,000 Americans dead, hundreds if not millions of Americans mourning them. 7.4 million Americans have contracted the disease. Many of them are going to have health problems for the rest of their life. For President Trump, who gets the best medical care of anyone in the world to say ‘Don’t let it dominate your life.’ There are children who don’t have parents now because of this virus! Don’t let it dominate your life?!”
CNN chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta said, “Jake, this is so disrespectful, I’m not sure if I can speak about this in some sort of cogent way here. I know people who right now, family members who have lost people, and they watch our programming, and it’s incredibly disrespectful. Obviously not true in the sense he knows how serious it is, and how serious it is since the beginning of February. Just gone through this himself now. It’s a total, total cognitive dissonance even within his own mind what he believes and what he says are diametrically opposed at this point. Not to mention, don’t be afraid of it, encourages this completely dangerous non-scientific approach of herd immunity. What do you mean, don’t be afraid of it, is this it’s? Also, are you advocating people get infected? Nothing to be afraid of. We know if that’s the policy, the approach, 2 million people could die. Hospitals would become overwhelmed. It would responding to a comment like that. It’s gross.”
Tapper said, “I just want to say to anybody out there who’s lost somebody to the virus or is grappling with it or has somebody in their life who is grappling with it because I know young, healthy people who had this virus, who are still not fully recovered and may never be because of the damage to their lungs. I just want the to know there are plenty of us out here who understand that it’s okay to be afraid of COVID. It’s ok that it’s dominating your life because it has dominated your life! And the idea that the President of the United States is out there, because he feels fine, maybe it’s because of a steroid I don’t know, saying this, is so disrespectful to you and I just want you to know you’re not alone if you’re out there, just shocked that this kind of callous indifference would be relayed by the person who is actually charged with protecting you from this virus.”
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