During
COVID Briefing, Mike Pence Touts Constitutional Right to Hold Trump Rallies
By JEREMY
STAHL
JUNE 26, 20205:04 PM
On Friday, the White House’s coronavirus task force held its
first public briefing in nearly two months. The reason for the reappearance is
the rapid rise in cases this week across the American south and southwest, but
the task force, which had gone quiet since the Trump administration began its
efforts to encourage states to reopen the country, didn’t have much in the way
of new guidance to report. Instead, it seemed like an opportunity for task
force members Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci to explain the new calamity and convey the continued need for
social distancing in some areas.
For the head of the task force, Vice President Mike Pence,
and other top Trump administration officials, the purpose of the event seemed
to be—per usual—to lather President Donald Trump in praise for his response to
a pandemic that has killed more than 120,000 Americans. Coronavirus has reemerged in force amidst Trump-encouraged
state reopenings even as it has largely subsided
in Europe and elsewhere, but according to Pence, that’s nothing to really worry
about. Just last week, the vice president published an article in the Wall Street
Journal titled “There Isn’t a Coronavirus ‘Second Wave.’”
On Friday, Pence also responded to questions about why the
Trump campaign staged a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, ignoring its own advice to
the American people to listen to local health officials (local health officials
in Tulsa denounced the gathering). The vice president’s explanation of this was
that “it’s really important to recognize how important freedom and personal
responsibility are to this entire equation” and to imply that campaign rallies
were part of a larger economic reopening intended in part to protect the mental
health of Americans and prevent suicide.
Pence began the event by praising the president for keeping
American death totals below the 2.2 million Americans that might have lost
their lives had no mitigation efforts been taken, something he
has continuously celebrated in spite of the fact that our case and death totals
are the highest in the world.
“The president made that decision,” Pence said. “Inarguably,
as we see where we are today as a nation, because of what the American people
have done, because of the incredible work of our health care workers, because
of our partnership with governors in every state, we did just that. We slowed
the spread, we flattened the curve, we saved lives.”
Remarkably, Pence then said that it was “nothing short of a
national accomplishment” that at the previous height of the pandemic, there
were enough ventilators not to leave people dying in waiting rooms without
care. This is what you might call a low bar.
Pence did provide some information about the
rising cases, noting that the national case count had dipped from 30,000 per
day in April to 20,000 per day at the start of this month, but was now back up
to a startling 40,000 new cases in a single day this week. He further noted that only 5 percent of new cases are
currently resulting in hospitalizations, as opposed to 15 percent two months
ago, and celebrated the fact that “this week, there were two days when we lost
less than 300 Americans.” (Earlier this month, 2,500 Americans died from
COVID-19 in a single day, but more than 200 Americans dying in a single day
from this disease is still a horrible tragedy.)
The self-congratulation was not isolated to the vice
president. When it was Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex
Azar’s turn to speak, he said that “now, thanks to the president and the
vice president’s leadership and the hard work of our team, America has never
been readier to combat COVID-19.” However, it does not seem like our level of
readiness is yet up to snuff, as months into the pandemics American case counts
have risen to ten times that of the European Union. Europe was
generally earlier to confront the disease, but also earlier to ramp up per
capita testing capacity and, in many countries, more stringent in its lockdown
measures. Those efforts now seem to be paying off, as case totals have
plummeted and elements of everyday life still absent in the United States, such
as sporting events, have already returned.
At the end of the press conference, Pence was asked about
the Trump campaign’s Tulsa rally. In addition to his might-prevent-suicides
argument, he defended the gathering on constitutional grounds. “The freedom of
speech, the right to peaceably assemble is enshrined in the Constitution of the
United States, and we have an election coming up this Fall,” Pence said. “We
still want to give people the freedom to participate in the political process
and we respect that.” He added that, even though they had held the rally, the
administration was still asking “people listen to the leadership in their state
and the leadership in their local community and adhere to that guidance” around
wearing face coverings and avoiding mass gatherings, and continuing to “to
reinforce that message.”
When a reporter asked why the campaign, though, directly
ignored the warnings of Tulsa’s top health official
Bruce Dart not to hold its rally, Pence again emphasized his First
Amendment argument and then seemed to make a bizarre side point: “It’s so
important that we recognize that as we issued guidance to reopen America now
two months ago and now as all 50 states are opening up our country again,
people are going back to work, American everyday life is being restored kind of
one step, one day at a time,” Pence said. “There are profound health
implications to the lockdowns through which we just passed. I heard a statistic
not long ago at a task force briefing that in one jurisdiction there had been a
50 percent increase in the number of people presenting in emergency rooms
having attempted suicide.”
Implying major political rallies were needed to help suicide
prevention was a strange thing to say as states like Texas and Florida were in
the process of shutting bars and restaurants down to address rising case
numbers. As for the Tulsa rally, we know that dozens of secret service
officials and agents who attended the event were ordered to quarantine after two of them
tested positive this week. At least eight campaign staff who helped organize
the event have also tested positive. The task force is back because cases of
the coronavirus are again on the upswing. Let’s see how long it takes Pence to
admit that means we can’t go back to everyday American life.
