Coronavirus: “This is no time for politics” – US Vice President Mike Pence

“As the President said, this is no time for politics. And frankly, I think that was Don Jr.’s point. That there has been some very strong rhetoric directed at the President by some members of Congress.”

“But responding to the kind of things that have been hurled is understandable.”

“But what the President’s charged us to do, in my conversation with Speaker Pelosi, with Senator (Chuck) Schumer, my conversations with Republican and Democratic governors, is to set the politics aside on this and to work the problem. And I want to assure your viewers, that’s exactly what we’re doing.”

– US Vice President Mike Pence, calling for political unity between Republicans and Democrats in responding to coronavirus threat in the US.

This is in reaction to the political storm brewing over comments by President Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr accusing Democrats of wanting millions to die just to be able to stop President Trump politically.

In an interview Trump Jr had said:

Anything that they can use to try to hurt Trump, they will. Anything he does in a positive sense, like you heard from the reporter that was just suspended from ABC, they will not give him credit for. The playbook is old at this point.

But for them to try to take a pandemic and seemingly hope that it comes here, and kills millions of people so that they could end Donald Trump’s streak of winning, is a new level of sickness. You know, I don’t know if this is coronavirus or Trump derangement syndrome, but these people are infected badly.

We call for political unity in the US at this time to enable a strong response to corona virus. As they say, when the US sneezes, the rest of the world catch cold. When 2 elephants fight, the grass suffers.

Coronavirus isn’t just any virus. This is a virus that has made the world’s richest people loose billions.

Coronavirus has led to precipitous falls in US stock prices. It is not the everyday pandemic that should be treated with the kid’s gloves of normal politics.

I mean, in China, whole cities have been shot down.

For America, the politics now should read ‘united we stand’. This is no time for ‘politics as usual’.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/01/politics/mike-pence-political-coronavirus-rhetoric-cnntv/index.html