President Trump expressed his desire to reopen schools in the fall during a White House event on Tuesday afternoon amid surging cases of the coronavirus across the country.
Trump first praised Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) for doing a “terrific job” by ordering schools to reopen in the fall. The President then added that his administration hopes that most schools in the country will open back up and that he hopes local officials won’t keep schools shuttered for “political reasons.”
On Monday, Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran issued an emergency order declaring that all public schools must reopen to students in-person when the academic year begins next month.
Corcoran’s emergency order came as Florida became the state with the third-highest number of coronavirus cases in the U.S. On Tuesday, Florida reported more than 7,000 more cases of coronavirus, bringing the total number of cases statewide to 213,794.
Corcoran wrote in the emergency order that schools not only provide sites for academic learning, but also serve as places for students to attain “nutrition, socialization, counseling and extra-curricular activities.” Florida’s education commissioner also argued that reopening schools is critical to the state’s economic success.
The President seemingly agreed with Corcoran’s sentiments during the White House event, arguing that the reopening of schools is “going to be good for them politically” and the White House plans to pressure governors into reopening schools amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“So they keep the schools closed — no way,” Trump said. “So we are very much going to put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools, to get them open, and it’s very important.”
Trump reiterated that “it’s very important for our country” for schools to be open.
“So we are going to be a lot of putting a lot of pressure on opening schools in the fall,” Trump said.
Watch Trump’s remarks below:
Trump: "We are very much going to put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools." pic.twitter.com/0XD5WksaMa
— Talking Points Memo (@TPM) July 7, 2020
Trump is determined to slaughter as many Americans as possible for Putin before he is forced from office in shame and under investigation for his multitude of crimes.
Worse. Than. Hitler.
It’ll be a testament to his super weak position when governors of most states just simply ignore him.
Every Republican who follows Trump on this must be harassed, shamed, humiliated, thrown out of office and charged with crimes. I’m even open to the notion of a public flogging for this. We’re talking about children.
Imagine what this hellscape called America will look like in October, November, December? It’s a horrible thought.
Way too nice.
We are talking suburban voters, the proverbial “soccer moms”, they are really going to love this message from Trump (and DeSantos) that “oh well, pandemic be damned, kids are going to go to school and if people die, well so be it, it just might help me get reelected”
The problem with Hillary’s messaging in 2016 was that people could not tie Trump’s horrible character traits to their own fate. Hillary just thought people would put two and two together. They did not. Now everyone with 1/2 a brain (basically all educated suburban voters) can see that Trump’s narcissistic pathology is literately deadly.
Give Trump another month of this type of crap, and the markets finally falling, and he will be luck to be at 35% support for reelection.