This archive report was first published on 29 June 2020.
Published on June 29, 2020, President Donald Trump's weekend was marked by his own often divisive obsessions, as the pandemic continued to rage across the United States.
Despite the record-breaking infection rates and the alarming warning from his Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, Trump largely ignored the implications of the disastrous US government response to the worst public health crisis in 100 years.
Instead, he found time to defend a statue of former President Andrew Jackson, who retired to his slave plantation in 1837, and to retweet a video in which a supporter chanted “white power.”
Trump also denied reports that he was briefed that Russia offered a bounty for the killings of US and UK soldiers by the Taliban — but didn’t say how he would respond and stand up for American troops if the story was true.
Furthermore, Trump made two trips to his Virginia course, despite boasting that he canceled a weekend trip to his New Jersey resort to make sure “law and order is enforced” in Washington, DC.
His negligence came despite his Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar delivering an alarming warning on CNN that appeared to contradict Vice President Mike Pence’s claim of “truly remarkable progress” in the battle against coronavirus.
“This is a very, very serious situation and the window is closing for us to take action and get this under control,” Azar told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”
Since Pence spoke on Friday, the United States racked up record numbers of new coronavirus infections, with more than 40,000 on Friday and more than 42,000 on Saturday.
States like Florida, Texas, and Arizona, which embraced Trump’s demands for a swift economic opening and failed to satisfy the administration’s own benchmarks to do so safely, are discovering that the virus is rampant.
The Vice President traveled to Texas on Sunday and appeared alongside Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, and appeared to make a significant shift — calling on Americans to wear masks if they cannot observe social distancing guidelines — a step that Trump, who refuses to wear a mask and says that those who do are trying to hurt him politically, refuses to take.
“Wearing a mask is just a good idea and it will, we know, from experience, will slow the spread of the coronavirus,” Pence said.
