CNN’s Jake Tapper on Thursday during his show “The Lead” accused President Donald Trump of tweeting “deranged” conspiracy theories while ignoring surging coronavirus cases across the country.
Tapper said, “It’s spreading — everything’s going in the wrong direction…And yet, President Trump — nowhere to be found. He has made no public comments on Covid since he lost the election. Even though his Covid task force met on Monday, they’ve not briefed the public in weeks. How bad of a position will we be in by the time President-elect Biden takes over in January, on January 20?”
Medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta replied, “By the end of this year, on December 31, we would be over 300,000 newly infected Covid patients a day.”
He added, “It’s hard to even say that out loud. That would make it the worst humanitarian disaster.”
Tapper said, “I mean, how is it not a dereliction of duty?”
He continued, “This is going on right now. It’s getting worse. It was predicted. Everybody has been sounding the alarm. President Trump has not announced any sort of revamping of testing, revamping of steps needed to be taken, contact tracing. What should he be doing right now?”
Gupta said, “Well, I mean, you know, I‘ll be honest if it were me, and I’m probably glad that nobody thinks it should be me, but I would hand this over to the coronavirus task force and the CDC and say get to work. Do daily briefings. Let the American people know what’s happening. Create a national strategy. Nobody likes to hear the term lockdown, but there are some places spiraling out of control right now. Figure out if you can do circuit breaker sort of lockdowns, surge testing into those areas.”
He added, “Not forever but for a few weeks narrowly focused on the local areas where cases were spiking, with a pause on large public gatherings and broad contract tracing.”
Tapper concluded, “President Trump, instead, is retweeting these deranged voting software conspiracy theories instead of doing the number one job for a president, to protect the lives of the American people.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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