Donald Trump goes maskless to tour medical equipment facility

Donald
Trump traveled to a medical equipment distribution facility in Allentown,
Pennsylvania, on Thursday, to tout a plan to replenish and upgrade the vital
federal stockpile.
According
to the pool report, “the president and his entourage were led around by Owens
and Minor employees, who explained their distribution system and the products
they handle.
“Trump
and [White House chief of staff] Mark Meadows did not wear masks. Everyone else
did.”
Last
week in Arizona, which like Pennsylvania will be a battleground state in
November, Trump did not wear a mask while he toured a facility which made
masks.
Then,
to widespread comment, the James Bond theme song Live and Let Die played in the
background.
The
Pennsylvania event had the trappings of a campaign rally. For his remarks,
Trump approached the podium to the sound of God Bless the USA.
He
promised to “create a stockpile [of medical equipment] that is not only the
best-resourced in the world but also evolved to meet all of the new threats
that can happen, things that you’re not even thinking about right now”.
He
also announced that on the flight to Pennsylvania, he signed a new Defense
Production Act authority to invest in US-based pharmaceutical producers.
“All
that social distancing,” he said, noting that the facility’s employees were
spaced 6ft apart. “Look at you people. That’s pretty impressive. But we like it
the old way a little bit better, don’t we? And we’ll be back, we’ll be back to
that soon. I really believe it.”
The
president also assailed the media – “a disaster” – and Joe Biden, the
presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
Referring
to an occasion on which Biden garbled the name of the H1N1 virus, Trump asked
the crowd: “N1H1, who said that?”
“Sleepy
Joe!” he said, answering himself to a ripple of nervous laughter.
Trump
argued that the Obama administration mishandled the response to H1N1, though
the scale of that 2009 outbreak was nothing compared to the death toll and
social disruption from Covid-19 this year.
According
to figures from Johns Hopkins University, more than 1.4m cases have been
confirmed in the US and nearly 85,000 people have died. The outbreak appears to
be receding in New York, by far the worst-hit state, but new hotspots are being
reported, some in traditionally Republican states.
Critics
charge that the situation in the US has been made worse by Trump’s
mismanagement.