Here’s what went on that day at the White House coronavirus rally:
The president, meanwhile, went on to insist he has absolute power when it comes to governors’ stay-at-home orders during the crisis. Asked on Monday how he would respond if a governor issued a stay-at-home order in conflict of his national wishes, Trump insisted his power as president is “total.”
“When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total and that is the way it’s gonna be,” Trump bellowed. “It’s total. It’s total. And the governors know that.”
The president reiterated that assertion throughout the rest of the marathon briefing. After CNN’s Kaitlan Collins pushed back, saying it wasn’t true that Trump’s authority is total, the president said they were “going to write papers on this” but that it won’t be necessary because the governors “need us one way or the other because ultimately it comes with the federal government.”
When further asked if any governors had agreed that he has the authority to force them to reopen, Trump said that he didn’t ask anybody because, “I don’t need to.”
He knew it was virulently contagious. And yet he was ready to force the Governors to reopen whether they liked it or not. He changed his mind shortly thereafter and settled on the “blame the blue states” strategy. But he knew more people would die from re-opening haphazardly and he didn’t care.
And this was also happening, which I had forgotten about:
Even before Trump began the briefing Monday, the last 24 hours were a whirlwind for the White House. On Sunday, Trump quote tweeted a social media post with the #FireFauci hashtag, boosting fringe criticisms about Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Trump’s retweet came on the heels of Fauci, during a CNN appearance, saying that there was a “lot of pushback” early on by the Trump administration on initiating social-distancing restrictions and that lives could have been saved if they had acted earlier.
He’s been knowingly letting people die every step of the way.