Trump ‘goes big’
Health officials sound alarm over large crowd celebrations
AS CORONAVIRUS cases spike, public health officials are pleading with Americans to avoid large crowds and hold more muted Independence Day celebrations this weekend, but subdued is not President Donald Trump’s style, and he aimed to go big, promising a “special evening” in Washington that could bring tens of thousands to the National Mall.
Trump’s “Salute for America” on the 244th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence yesterday, in Washington, was to include a speech from the White House that he said would celebrate American heritage and include a military flyover and a fireworks display.
The police blocked off streets around the White House, Black Lives Matter Plaza and the Lincoln Memorial, where demonstrators planned to join one of the dozen organised protests in advance of Trump’s night-time address on the South Lawn.
On Friday night, the US president kicked off the holiday weekend by travelling to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota for a fireworks display near the mountain carvings of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.
There, he delivered a dark and divisive speech that cast his struggling effort to win a second term as president as a battle against a “new far-left fascism”, reported the New York Times. In his remarks, Trump accused protesters who have pushed for racial justice of engaging in a “merciless campaign to wipe out our history”.
His Democratic rival, Joe Biden, said in a statement that the US “never lived up” to its founding principle that “all men are created equal,” but that today “we have a chance to rip the roots of systemic racism out of this country”.
Trump’s participation in big gatherings comes as many communities decided to scrap fireworks, parades and other traditions with the goal of preventing the spread of Covid19 through large gatherings. For the
Mount Rushmore event, Governor Kristi Noem, a Trump ally, insisted that social distancing wasn’t necessary and masks were optional.
Trump spent little time in his Mount Rushmore address reflecting on the pandemic, which has killed more than 129000 Americans.
The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has cautioned that mass gatherings present a high risk for spread of the virus.
Trump’s surgeon general, Jerome Adams, who has stepped up his call for Americans to wear a mask in public, sidestepped when asked during an interview on Friday whether he would caution a loved one from attending such large gatherings. “It’s not a yes or no,” Adams told NBC’S Today Show.
“Every single person has to make up their own mind.”