Dana Bash Contrasts Biden’s Covid Moment of Silence with Trump’s Maskless Photo Op After Infection: ‘What a Difference a Few Months Makes’
CNN’s chief political correspondent, Dana Bash, contrasted the current and former president’s radically different approaches in publicly responding to and recognition of the Covid-19 pandemic at the White House.
Speaking with anchor Wolf Blitzer on Monday evening Bash offered up her take just after President Joe Biden gave a public address and held a moment of silence outside the White House’s South Portico alongside First Lady Jill Biden as well as Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Mark Emhoff to mourn the staggering loss of 500,000 Americans from the Covid-19 pandemic.
“It’s almost hard to wrap your mind around, the numbers are so incredibly staggering,” Bash noted, before stepping back to address the symbolism of Biden’s gesture. “Can I also take a moment to say what a moment? What an event that the White House put on for the American people and for the world to memorialize the 500,000 people who have been taken by this virus.”
“You know, I don’t want to do a lot of looking back,” she added, before alluding to a still-infected Trump very publicly removing his mask on the South Portico balcony after his return from Walter Reed. That moment was being filmed for a subsequently-released video, in which the former president dismissed the virus, urging Americans to “get out there” and saying “don’t let it dominate your lives.” The national death toll from the coronavirus pandemic on that date — October 5,2020 — stood at roughly 210,000, a grim total that has since grown by 140%.
“At almost the same location where his predecessor came back from the hospital having the virus himself and ripped off his mask,” Bash observed. “What a difference just a few months makes in having somebody who, as my colleagues have said, you know, wants to emote and empathize and to sympathize and to grieve with this country because that is who he is, unfortunately because of his own personal tragedies.”
“He does this almost on a daily basis,” Bash continued. “He talked about that with the card that he carries in his coat pocket, but also with people who he calls all the time. If he hears somebody is sick, if he hears something lost a loved one, he’s on the phone. You hear countless stores, I’m sure you’ve heard as well, Wolf, over the decades he’s been in public office.”
Watch the video above, via CNN.
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