President Donald Trump has cancelled his planned golf weekend at his New Jersey club as coronavirus cases spike in the United States and several states walk back the reopening process as infections grow.
The president won’t go to his Trump National Golf Club Bedminster, the White House announced. He was scheduled to leave the White House for his New Jersey retreat on Friday afternoon.
The White House gave no reason for the cancellation but deputy press secretary Judd Deere said it had nothing to do with New Jersey imposing a 14-day quarantine on those who spent time in some hot spot states, including Arizona, the state President Trump was in on Tuesday.
The cancellation comes as infections rose across the United States by at least 39,818 on Thursday, marking the worst day since the virus first hit the U.S. Red states in the South – like Texas, Florida and Arizona – have been some of the worst hit.
President Donald Trump has cancelled his planned golf weekend at his New Jersey club as coronavirus cases rise in U.S.
President Trump golfed last Sunday at his Trump National Golf Club in Virginia
The White House offered no explanation of why President Trump’s trip to his Bedminister golf club was cancelled a few hours before he was scheduled to leave
President Trump has been focused on his economic message in recent days even as Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill have urged him to turn his attention to the pandemic.
Voters in public polls have given the president low marks for his handling of the pandemic even as they praise his stewardship of the economy.
Trump’s ignored the soaring infection rate and instead declared on Twitter that ‘our Economy is roaring back and will NOT be shut down’ and that any remaining ’embers’ or ‘flare-ups’ of virus cases would be ‘put out, as necessary.’
Speaking to his Fox News ally Sean Hannity last night, Trump defended his response to the coronavirus pandemic, claiming that his border wall with Mexico is working to stop further spread and doubling down on branding it the ‘China plague’.
‘The Democrats want to open borders, even if you just look at the virus that we’re talking about, look at San Diego where we built that wall – it would be infecting lives like nobody’s ever seen before,’ he said.
Trump said that the United States has one of the best coronavirus mortality rates in the world, despite it being the country with the highest death toll, and said that it was down to a high level of testing.
‘So we have more cases, because we do the greatest testing. If we didn’t do testing, we’d have no cases. Other countries they don’t test millions,’ Trump told the host.
‘If we didn’t do tests, we’d look great. But, it’s the right thing to do.’
The White House Coronavirus Task Force has not held a public briefing since April. It is scheduled to hold one on Friday at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Trump has been on the road but the economy and is reopening has been his focus.
On Thursday he visited the Fincantieri Marinette Marine in Wisconsin to brag about a new $5.5 billion contract it was awarded to build ships for the Navy.
‘It’s gonna be built right here in the American heartland and it’s going to be built by you. And it’s going to go on for a long time because it’s up to 20 ships and might be extended,’ he said.
He also held hi first campaign rally in four months in Tulsa on Saturday – where several members of his advance team tested positive for coronavirus.
And he was in Arizona Tuesday where he spoke to nearly 3,000 students. Most attendees at the Tulsa and Phoenix events did not wear masks either.
Coronavirus cases are on the rise in all three states Trump has visited in the past week.
Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has also criticized Trump for not doing enough about the crisis.
‘There are no miracles coming,’ Biden warned at a campaign event on Thursday.
‘Amazingly, he hasn’t grasped the most basic fact of this crisis: To fix the economy we have to get control over the virus,’ Biden said of Trump during an event in Lancaster. ‘He’s like a child who can´t believe this has happened to him. His whining and self-pity. This pandemic didn’t happen to him. It happened to all of us.’
Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Florida all pledged to pause their reopenings as the virus rates in those states spiked.
Texas is forcing bars to close again, Arizona is telling residents to stay home and Florida has ordered bars to no longer serve alcohol as states walk back their reopening process as coronavirus infections rates spike.
In Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott shut down bars again on Friday and scaled back restaurant dining to 50 percent capacity – the most dramatic reversals yet as confirmed coronavirus cases surge.
Abbott also said rafting and tubing outfitters on Texas’ popular rivers must close and that outdoor gatherings of 100 people or more must be approved by local governments.
Texas has reported more than 17,000 confirmed new cases in the last three days with a record high positive tests of 5,996 on Thursday.
The day’s tally of 4,739 hospitalizations was also a record. The state’s rolling infection rate hit nearly 12 percent, a level not seen since the state was in a broad lockdown in mid-April.
The surge in hospitalizations has resulted in the largest pediatric hospital in the country opting to start treating adult patients in Houston to help free up beds. Statewide, the number of COVID-19 patients has more than doubled in two weeks.
President Donald Trump at his campaign rally in Tulsa (left) on Saturday; speaking to students in Phoenix on Tuesday (middle) and doing a Fox News town hall in Wisconsin on Thursday (right) – all three states have seen rising rates of the coronavirus
In Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott shut down bars again on Friday and scaled back restaurant dining to 50 percent capacity – the most dramatic reversals yet as confirmed coronavirus cases surge. Pictured are people dining out in May in Houston, Texas
Arizona Gov Doug Ducey, also a Republican, is also telling residents to stay home and on Thursday declared the state was ‘on pause’ as hospitals accelerate toward capacity.
The number of infections in Arizona surged again on Thursday with just over 3,000 new cases reported. In Arizona, 23 percent of tests conducted over the past seven days have been positive, nearly triple the national average.
There are currently 4,400 people hospitalized in the state with coronavirus and 1,400 of those are in ICU beds. A record 415 patients are on ventilators in the state.
Arizona is nearing hospital bed capacity with 88 percent of ICU beds occupied as of Thursday.
In Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said on Thursday he was pausing the state’s reopening due to the surge in cases as he resisted calls to mandate masks.
For the second consecutive day, Florida reported more than 5,000 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the state.
The rise in reported cases on Thursday was lower than the previous day’s record-setting mark, but it’s only the second time the state has crossed the 5,000-case mark in a day.
In total, the state has reported more than 114,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and at least 3,327 coronavirus-related deaths.
Florida’s seven-day average positivity rate for coronavirus tests reached 14.4 percent this week. By comparison, it was 3.8 percent on June 1 and 2.3 percent on May 25.
‘We are where we are,’ DeSantis said, adding that many of the new cases are in younger, healthier people.
He said people can avoid spreading the virus by wearing masks, along with avoiding big crowds and not being within close quarters with lots of other people indoors.
