Hillary Clinton chided Donald Trump’s presidential campaign for resuming large rallies amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and obliging those seeking tickets to his first event in Tulsa, Okla., to sign a liability waiver acknowledging the “inherent risk of exposure to COVID-19.”
If your rallies come with a liability waiver, you shouldn’t be holding them. https://t.co/J1BgdUec9k
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 12, 2020
In late May, Clinton, the former secretary of state and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, added a new Twitter profile picture that showed her wearing a black mask with the word “VOTE” printed on it.
Asked about the decision to return to large campaign rallies on June 19 in Tulsa despite the risk of exposure to COVID-19, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Wednesday that “we will ensure that everyone who goes is safe.”
On Wednesday, Trump explained the rationale for holding his first rally since March in Tulsa.
“They’ve done a great job with COVID, as you know, in the state of Oklahoma.”
While the state’s number of confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, fell in the month of May, it has spiked over the last few weeks, according to data from the Oklahoma State Department of Health. On Friday, the state recorded its largest single-day increase since the pandemic began.
❗️NEW: Oklahoma adds 222 coronavirus cases, the largest single-day increase the state has recorded.@koconews pic.twitter.com/nIrhsElvGc
— Dillon Richards (@KOCODillon) June 12, 2020
Asked on Friday about the liability waiver, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden was also critical of Trump.
“He knows it’s a problem, but he’s not doing a damn thing about it!” said Biden, who, despite leading in virtually all recent national polling, has not scheduled any large campaign rallies.
Trump announced on June 2 that he was moving the site of the Republican National Convention from North Carolina because Roy Cooper, the state’s Democratic governor, insisted that GOP officials provide detailed plans about scaling back the event due to concerns over the transmission of the coronavirus.
Cooper, Trump tweeted, “is still in Shelter-In-Place Mode, and not allowing us to occupy the arena as originally anticipated and promised.”
On Thursday, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel announced that the convention would be moved to a 15,000-seat arena in Jacksonville, Fla. The Miami Herald reported Friday that the 64 counties in Florida that had moved to loosen coronavirus restrictions on June 5 had seen a nearly 42 percent increase in new COVID-19 cases. One of those counties is Duval, which includes Jacksonville.
Health experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading expert on infectious diseases on the coronavirus task force, worry that a combination of looser social distancing measures and the large-scale demonstrations over the killing of George Floyd could contribute to a second wave of new COVID-19 cases.
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