Veteran journalist Carl Bernstein said President Trump is treating his supporters like “sacrificial lambs” during the coronavirus pandemic.
The Watergate sleuth appeared on CNN with Anderson Cooper on Monday night and commented on the president holding a crowded indoor rally in Nevada over the weekend that defied state regulations and his own administration’s own health guidelines.
“We are witnessing a homicidal president convening, purposely, a homicidal assembly to help him get reelected as president of the United States instead of protecting the health and welfare of the people of the United States, including his own supporters, whose lives he is willing to sacrifice,” Bernstein said.
“Here is this president, who has staked part of his presidency on the right to life, particularly of the unborn, and every day, he has sacrificed the lives of thousands of Americans because he is unwilling to deal honestly, forthrightly, meaningfully, with the greatest domestic crisis in our post-war history in this country,” he added, calling Trump’s handling of the health crisis “the most grievous felony committed by any president in our history probably.”
Bernstein concluded, “Now, we’ve seen in front of us, tonight, this homicidal assembly that the president of the United States has called his supporters to be sacrificial lambs. It’s astonishing.”
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Most people at the president’s rally in Henderson were not wearing masks. But those who stood behind the president, and were, therefore, in view of the cameras airing his speech, were required to cover their faces, according to the Associated Press.
Trump defended the move to hold the rally indoors. “I’m on a stage, and it’s very far away,” he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.