Christine Todd Whitman: Tens of Thousands of People are Dead Because Trump ‘Did Not Take This Virus Seriously’
Christine Todd Whitman is that rare breed of a Republican politician who is willing and eager to break the so-called 11th commandment made famous by Ronald Reagan, “thou one shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.” The two-term former governor of New Jersey showed as much during a Thursday appearance on MSNBC when she offered a harshly critical assessment of the Trump administration’s early handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
The moment came after host Andrea Mitchell asked Whitman to opine on recent comments made by Attorney General Bill Barr that curiously compared government lockdowns—designed to abate the spread of the potentially deadly virus—to slavery.
Mitchell asked the former governor, “How do you deal with this, when the Attorney General of the United States talks about lockdowns as an infringement on freedom and form of slavery?”
Whitman first noted that this sort of rhetoric makes a governor’s job impossible before saying, “it’s really dangerous, what this administration is doing.” She explained, “It’s not just politics, it’s people’s lives and by telling people and confusing people about the importance of masks.”
“This president, and people like Bill Barr, going out there and saying the things that they do, are putting people’s lives at risk,” she continued. “We have literally lost tens of thousands of people because this administration did not take this virus seriously at the beginning.”
The Director of the CDC said during congressional testimony that if all Americans were to wear a mask, the virus would be controlled in six to 12 weeks. However, President Donald Trump continues to give mixed messages about the efficacy of mask-wearing. Many in his base of supporters appear to believe that masks are part of some grand conspiracy or that their potential impact on the spread of Covid-19 is solely a result “fake news.”
Watch above via MSNBC.
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