US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said President Donald Trump brazenly invited COVID-19 to himself, following months of frequent flouting of health guidelines.
“This is tragic. It’s very sad. But it also is something that, again, going into crowds unmasked and all the rest was sort of a brazen invitation for something like this to happen,” she said on MSNBC Friday.
Pelosi said she prayed for Trump and his family.
She also hoped that those who continue to doubt the gravity of the pandemic and dismiss the advice of public health experts, will use the president’s COVID-19 diagnosis ” as a transition to a saner approach to what this virus is all about.”
“Maybe now that people who see the president of the United States — with all the protection that he has — and the first lady still having this exposure, it might be, as you say, a learning experience. But more than learning, it has to be something that is acted upon,” she said.
Trump has repeatedly downplayed the pandemic, even as more than 200,000 Americans have died from COVID-19.
He rarely wears masks in public, mocks those who do, and has held multiple crowded campaign events where most of the attendees did not wear masks.
