President Trump said he’s hoping to hold more of his “massive” 25,000-person rallies in the near future. The president didn’t offer a target date but said he hopes that this happens before the November presidential election, which is likely to take place regardless of COVID-19 (coronavirus).
What We Know:
- Trump told reporters during a business round table discussion, “Hopefully in the not too distant future we’ll have some massive rallies and people will be sitting next to each other. I can’t imagine a rally where you have every fourth seat full, every six seats are empty for every one that you have full, that wouldn’t look too good.”
- Despite advances, public health experts don’t expect a vaccine to be ready for another 12-18 months, but the administration and researchers are trying to speed up that timetable. The president’s current social distancing guidelines, which technically expire Thursday, recommend that gatherings be limited to no more than 10 people.
- The president also repeated an earlier assertion that the coronavirus will “go away”. CBS News White House correspondent Ben Tracy pressed the president on why he believes the virus will go away without a vaccine.
- “It’s gonna’ go, it’s gonna’ leave, it’s gonna’ be gone. It’s gonna’ be eradicated,” the president responded. “It might take longer, it might be in smaller sections. It won’t be what we had. And we also learned a lot.”
Trump wasn’t clear on how exactly the deadly bug would “go away” before a vaccine was made available but referenced the fact federal drug trials of remdisivir have yielded some hopeful results.
