The Trump administration is not just ignoring the CDC guidelines, they are not just opening society blind – without benchmarks, the administration is now actively working to make conditions less safe. Rawstory has a breakdown setting out how Mike Pence and his staff actively worked to create a more dangerous dynamic during a meeting on Friday. From Rawstory:

On Friday Vice President Mike Pence flew aboard Air Force Two to Des Moines, Iowa, to meet with food industry CEOs. His flight was delayed after his press secretary, Katie Miller, tested positive for coronavirus. Several staffers were forced to exit the plane before it took off. Also board were Iowa Republican Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, and Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue.

Pence held a roundtable discussion at the headquarters of the Hy-Vee supermarket chain. As The Intercept reports, five industry executives, seated at the table, all wearing masks, were approached by a staffer who asked them to remove their masks before the Vice President would come to the table (video below.)

Let’s review:

Mike Pence’s staff told the executives to remove the masks in order to meet with VP Pence. What could possibly have been the justification for such a move? (We think we know the answer. There were cameras present, and the administration doesn’t want cameras catching anyone in and around Trump with masks across their face. Masks make people think that there is some danger about of some kind.)

Not only were meeting participants told to remove the masks. They were told to remove them even though Pence’s team knew that they had just had a critical team member, someone who had been in each of those meetings, test positive. Someone on Pence’s team could easily have just tested negative because they had not had time to incubate enough virus to test positive yet.

And they were perfectly willing to put those executives in danger because Trump was worried about the optics.

There is a huge lesson to be learned here. Even in the face of a known danger that can easily be mitigated, the Trump administration will have you put in danger if they believe it impacts them even slightly with respect to public perception.

Remember that lesson.

“The strange request underscored just how committed the White House is to ignoring federal health advice intended to slow the spread of the pandemic coronavirus,”

“The Des Moines Register reported that, before the event, ‘staffers with gloves and masks took the temperatures of people who entered the building one at a time.’ Video of the hall showed that very few of the people in the audience were wearing masks.”

Unbelievable.

Watch:

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Peace, y’all

Jason

[email protected] and on Twitter @MiciakZoom