Full Event Video HERE
During a press call this morning, Jason Kander, Col. Moe Davis, Jake Auchincloss, and Vets for Biden’s Claire Russo slammed Donald Trump for stooping to a new low: exposing Gold Star Families to the coronavirus and knowingly endangering the same people who’ve already given so much. To add insult to injury, Trump then turned around and blamed his infection on the Gold Star Families themselves instead of taking responsibility for his own reckless actions.
The event highlighted how this is yet another example of Trump’s failed leadership as Commander-in-Chief, who has repeatedly denigrated and mocked the service and sacrifice of military members and their families and puts politics before their health and safety.
Event Video Available Here
“We’ve come to an unfortunate and an exhausted acceptance of the fact that this president puts the American people at risk in a variety of ways on a regular basis. And now we see that the president is quite literally, person to person, putting Americans at risk,” said Jason Kander, President of Veterans Community Project, founder of Let America Vote, former Missouri Secretary of State, and Afghanistan veteran. “So they’ve created an environment where everywhere the President goes there is a bubble of peer pressure not to take safety precautions that protect yourself and everyone around you, and everywhere that that bubble goes in this campaign or in the act of attempting to govern this nation they are putting people at risk.”
“It’s disappointing to have to be here this morning and talk about this because our troops deserve a lot better than what they’re getting from their Commander-in-Chief,” said Colonel Moe Davis, Air Force veteran and candidate for Congress in NC-11. “We have 18-year-olds that have reported for basic training to be soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and Coast Guardsmen and we hold them to a higher standard than we do the Commander-in-Chief. You know, it’s instilled in them that integrity and responsibility matter. And we have a commander in chief that has spent his entire life lying and avoiding responsibility.”
“This president ignores science and doctors when it comes to combating the coronavirus. He started out dismissing the coronavirus and, by his own admission, trying to downplay it despite what the best experts were telling him. Because he didn’t like the politics, ” said Jake Auchincloss, Democratic nominee for Congress in MA-04 and Marine Corps veteran. “Even now, when he himself has fallen ill with COVID, he continues to disassemble and put Americans at risk by refusing to, as Secretary Kander said, take responsibility. The core responsibility of the President of the United States. He will not take responsibility for a pandemic that has cost the lives of more than 200,000 Americans. And he has handled this so badly that now the White House and himself are a hotspot for the coronavirus.”
“The President appears to be knowingly put those individuals at risk and did it with a smile on his face – very happy to sort of flout his disobeying all of the recommendations of all of the health experts as to how one conducts themselves, even when you don’t know you have coronavirus. But we saw him come home from the hospital and take his mask off, there’s a Marine guard standing right there,” said Claire Russo, former Congressional candidate in VA-05 and a Marine Corps veteran. “Again, going back to the Gold Star Families, to the families that have given their loved ones for this country. These men and women said that they would lay down their lives for our country, not for the President of the United States who doesn’t feel like wearing a mask. And we can’t afford that. We cannot afford for our service members to be endangered in that way and potentially taken out of the fight.”