“We have an election coming up this fall,” Pence said. “President Trump and I believe that taking proper steps, as we’ve created screening at recent events, and giving people the very best counsel that we have, we still want to give people the freedom to participate in the political process, and we respect that.”
Trump was roundly rebuked by national Democrats and public health experts for rallying inside an arena in Tulsa, Okla., last weekend and addressing a church packed with students in Phoenix on Tuesday.
Those events came as the number of new Covid-19 cases surged in the nation’s three most populous states — California, Florida and Texas — and the U.S. as a whole on Thursday registered another single-day record of more than 39,000 new infections.
But Pence on Friday insisted that Trump rally-goers “know and understand what’s happening in the community in which they live,” and argued that “even in a health crisis, the American people don’t forfeit” rights enshrined in the Constitution.
“I think it’s really important that we recognize how important freedom and personal responsibility are to this entire equation,” he said, “but allowing younger Americans to understand — particularly in the counties that are most impacted — the unique challenges that we are facing.”
