Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Sunday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “AM Joy” that President Donald Trump’s “ignorance” had worsened the coronavirus pandemic.
Guest host Jonathan Capehart asked, “As the mayor of a major American city, as the mayor of Chicago, do you feel abandoned by the federal government as a result of its inaction, as a result of there the not being a national plan to get a handle on the coronavirus pandemic?”
Lightfoot said, “Well, from the earliest days of this pandemic, I knew that the federal government was not going to be helpful. The CDC has been helpful, but the White House, HHS, DHS, they have not even had a plan, and I knew that we were on our own. I knew that from the earliest days when they were diverting flights from China to airports across the country, Chicago being one of them. But what is worse and what makes, I think, life on the ground in cities and states much more challenging is to have a president who has done everything he can to minimize the seriousness of this virus.”
She added, “Just mask-wearing alone. Politicizing something that we know is one of the few tools that we have outside of a virus that works and having to fight against that ignorance that is being spewed by him, the vice president, people in the inner circle of the White House, everyone as they are getting sick with the virus, it is mind-blowing. But it has done real damage across the country, and the mayors and governors are now having to clean up the mess and to try to get people into compliance and convince them that what we are doing is really trying to save lives.”
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