President Trump said Thursday he is canceling the portion of the Republican National Convention he moved from North Carolina to Florida because of a spat over coronavirus restrictions, saying the surge that blanketed the Sun Belt with infections made it impossible.
“To have a big convention is not the right time. I have to protect the American people,” he said at the White House.
Mr. Trump notified Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis of his decision and said he will hold “tele-rallies” instead, while allowing some business to continue in Charlotte, North Carolina.
He said Republican supporters were desperate to be in Florida in late August and “the drawings look absolutely beautiful,” but he decided it wasn’t worth it.
“They said, ‘Sir we can make this work very easily,’” Mr. Trump said, in his retelling of conversations behind closed doors. “I said, ‘There’s nothing more important in our country than keeping our people safe.’”
It’s a major turnabout for Mr. Trump, who sparred with North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, over social-distancing estrictions that would have made it difficult to hold his grand nomination party the way he wanted.
The president said when he chose Florida, it wasn’t a hotspot. That changed quickly in June and into July.
Typically, the president would make a grand speech as the GOP nominee. Mr. Trump said he will announce more plans in the coming days.
“We didn’t want to take any chances,” Mr. Trump said. “We’ll have a very nice something, we’ll figure it out.”
Even as Mr. Trump scrapped RNC festivities, he made a vocal push to reopen schools across the nation within weeks, citing data that shows children aren’t affected by the virus as much as adults.
He said 99.6% of fatalities of COVID-19 deaths are in adults, not children, and failing to get kids back in the classroom could usher in problems that are worse than the risk from the virus.
Mr. Trump said some districts may have to delay classroom learning for a few weeks, but “they have to open.”
“This isn’t about politics, this is about something very, very important,” Mr. Trump said.
He said he wants Congress to provide over $100 billion to repurpose schools to make them safe amid the pandemic.
Parents and employers widely agree that schools need to reopen to pave the way for normal work activity, though there is disagreement over how safe it is for everyone involved.
Major school districts from California to Georgia have announced they will start the academic year with online instruction instead of reopening classrooms, saying there is too much community spread of the virus.
Mr. Trump said if school districts don’t open, then parents should be allowed to get some of the proposed money from Congress to put their kids in private or charter schools.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that while some children and infants have gotten sick from COVID-19, “adults make up most of the known cases to date.”
A recent study from South Korea says children under 10 were roughly half as likely to transmit the disease than adults, though kids aged 10 to 19 do spread it at the same level.
Mr. Trump laid out his plans and demands as the U.S. passed a grim milestone — 4 million known infections since the pandemic began.
The U.S. added the last 1 million of its cases in just over two weeks. Testing is more widespread and finding more infections, though hospitalizations also reached 59,628 at midweek — the highest tally since April 21, when the pandemic was still raging.
Mr. Trump said he is surging resources to hotspots in the South, as the previously hard-hit Northeast becomes “very clean.”
There is some hope to be found, with the percentage of positive tests coming down in key states and signs that a Miami mask mandate paid dividends.
“What we’re seeing is some early evidence that the masks in public rule is working, and we want to make sure that it’s being adopted universally,” Miami Mayor Francis Suarez told CNN.
Mr. Suarez said the city is down to 20 cases a day, down from 60 a short while ago, so they’re not looking at a shutdown order as they see whether more limited measures pay off.
“We’re being patient and we’re letting those remediation efforts take full effect before making any decisions,” he said.
The coronavirus was discovered in Wuhan, China, in December. It swiftly spread across the globe, killing about 625,000 people.
Mr. Trump stressed that other countries are going through a hard time, too, saying he spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday and they’re having an especially hard time in Moscow.
