Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth says Trump's 'priorities are all wrong'
Source: CNN
Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth on Sunday condemned President Donald Trump's divisive message at Mount Rushmore over the weekend, saying his "priorities are all wrong" and adding that he has failed in his response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump on Friday delivered a message that stoked racial and cultural division in the US, instead of unifying the country which is embroiled in two crises -- the coronavirus pandemic and racial reckoning. The President on Saturday also gave a similar speech to commemorate Independence Day, in which he accused social justice protesters of trying to destroy America and compared the US's fight against Nazis and terrorists to his efforts to defeat "the radical left." He also claimed without evidence that 99% of coronavirus cases "are totally harmless."
"What really struck me about the speech that the President gave at Mount Rushmore was that he spent more time worried about honoring dead Confederates than he did talking about the lives of the 130,000 Americans who lost their lives to Covid-19 or by warning Russia off of the bounty they're putting on American's heads," Duckworth, a Democrat, told CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union." "I mean his priorities are all wrong here. He should be talking about what we're going to do to overcome this pandemic. What are we going to do to push Russia back? And instead he had no time for that."
She later added, "Both this President and the man he put in charge of the pandemic response team, the Vice President (Mike Pence), have both failed miserably at their jobs."
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/05/politics/tammy-duckworth-donald-trump-cnntv/index.html
Right wing social media is taking Duckworth out of context to imply that Duckworth is open to having George Washington statues taken down. Here is the part of the transcript in question:
But there are leaders like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson who were slave owners, and some people are demanding that their monuments come down, too. So, in your view, where does it end? Should statues, for example, of George Washington come down?
SEN. TAMMY DUCKWORTH (D-IL): Well, let me just say that we should start off by having a national dialogue on it at some point.
But, right now, we're in the middle of a global pandemic. And our -- one of our ally -- one of our -- countries that are opposed to us, Russia, has put a bounty on American troops' head.
What really struck me about this speech that the president gave at Mount Rushmore was that he spent more time worried about honoring dead Confederates than he did talking about the lives of our American -- 130,000 Americans who lost their lives to COVID-19, or by warning Russia off of the bounty they're putting on Americans' heads.
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