Don Lemon Goes OFF on White House for Declaring Victory Over Coronavirus: ‘All Part of the Plan For You to Think That This Is Over’
CNN’s Don Lemon served up a pointedly sharp attack on the White House, effectively accusing it of trying to fool the public into restarting the economy by ending the daily coronavirus task force briefings and all but declaring victory over the virus: “That’s all part of the plan for you to think that this is over.”
At the top of his show, Lemon played a clip of President Donald Trump earlier in the day at a roundtable meeting with business owners. During the meeting, Trump implied that the virus could be completely eradicated by next fall, when college football season starts. That claim has been directly contradicted by his own public health experts, who have repeatedly warned that a second Covid-19 wave after the summer is all but a certainty.
“Yeah. Let me just say something before I move on with what I have planned here,” a seemingly worn-out Lemon said after the video concluded. He has fired off several, slow-burn rants against the administration of late, like when he mocked Vice President Mike Pence’s refusal to wear a mask in the Mayo Clinic as “ridiculous” and offered an exasperated, “How much longer can this go on?” plea for sanity after Trump rage-tweeted (and subsequently deleted) a series of surreal, totally inaccurate posts attacking the press for its “Noble Prizes.”
“I’ve seen so many people out and about lately not socially distancing, not wearing masks, not following the rules. This is not over,” Lemon said, with evident frustration in his voice. “You may think it’s over because if you — if you actually pay attention to what’s happening in Washington with this administration, not having the briefings, trying to — pretending that this is over.”
“They want to move on to other things. So not having those briefings, that’s all part of the plan for you to think that this is over, that we have moved beyond this,” Lemon added, alluding to Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s Wednesday morning boast on Fox News about the “great success” the White House has had in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic. “People are still dying at alarming rates. Those quarantine orders that are given, they’re still in place. There are still orders in most places. So don’t get it twisted. Don’t sit there and think that this is over because you’ve just — you’ve been in the house for a long time. That’s not so.”
Watch the video above, via CNN.
