President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he’d informed Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia that he “strongly” disagreed with the governor’s decision to begin reopening parts of the state as soon as Friday, a high-profile break from a Republican ally.
“I told the governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, that I disagree strongly with his decision to open certain facilities,” Trump said at a White House coronavirus task force press briefing, doling out praise for “strong, resolute” Georgia residents.
Kemp announced earlier this week that he would allow certain types of businesses — including hair and nail salons, barbershops, gyms, tattoo parlors and bowling alleys — to reopen beginning Friday, as long as businesses practiced certain mitigation efforts to a surge in coronavirus infections in the state.
Kemp also announced that Georgians would soon be able to resume socially distanced dining in at restaurants and go to movie theaters in the state in a matter of days.
The move drew a swift backlash from critics who pointed to indicators that Georgia’s number of new cases was still on an upward trajectory and had not met the White House’s own benchmarks for lifting social-distancing measures. Even Republicans from neighboring states expressed concerns about the breadth of Kemp’s plan.
Trump on Wednesday asserted that Kemp’s rolled-back restrictions were “in violation” of the first step of his administration’s phased plan to return to normal and revive the economic standstill.
At the same time, Trump indicated he was not so opposed to Kemp’s decision that he would ask the federal government to step in.
“He must do what he thinks is right. I want him to do what he thinks is right, but I disagree with him on what he is doing,” the president said. He argued that he felt Kemp had moved “just too soon,” and seemed not to rule out federal intervention “if I see something totally egregious, totally out of line.”
“I think it’s too soon, and I love the people,” Trump said. “I love those people that use all of those things, the spas, the beauty parlors, the barbershops, tattoo parlors, I love them. But they can wait a little bit longer, just a little bit — not much — because safety has to predominate.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-diseases expert, echoed Trump’s disapproval.
“If I were advising the governor, I would tell him that he should be careful,” Fauci said at Wednesday’s briefing, acknowledging a “natural” desire “to move ahead quickly.”
“I would advise him not to just turn the switch on and go, because there is a danger of a rebound,” he continued. “But going ahead and leapfrogging into phases where you should not be, I would advise him as a health official and as a physician not to do that.”
Kemp also came under fire earlier this month when, announcing one of the country’s last statewide shelter-in-place orders, he said he’d only recently discovered that Covid-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus, could be spread asymptomatically — a fact that has been public for months.
But the governor has defended his decision throughout the week, despite the pushback, and even Trump on Wednesday morning appeared to cheer on governors who were choosing to reopen their states.
While the president acknowledged that he’d left the responsibility of reopening the country up to state and local leaders, an authority he wavered on last week before releasing his phased reopening plan, his comments would seem to effectively box the governor in.
The split between the two comes amid a larger national discussion about how and when to begin scaling back social-distancing measures in order to prevent a potentially devastating resurgence of infections. Public health experts have said that pulling back restrictions depended on a testing capacity not yet reached.
Meanwhile, unrest has begun to bubble up because of stay-at-home orders throughout the country and the economic collapse left in their wake. Opponents of the orders, including the president himself at times, have claimed that the economic fallout of stringent social-distancing restrictions outweighs the risk of the virus.
As some Republican governors have moved to more quickly reopen their states, others have formed regional pacts with neighboring state leaders to try to avoid a patchwork of different restrictions across the country.
In a press briefing at the White House the day before, Trump defended Kemp’s decision even as he admitted that he was unsure of what exactly the governor had announced.
“He’s a very capable man. He knows what he’s doing,” Trump said on Wednesday, adding that he planned to speak with Kemp soon. But when one reporter asked how social distancing could be achieved in “hair salons and nail salons and tattoo parlors” the president appeared taken aback.
“Where is that? Where is that?” he asked the journalist.
While Kemp this week acknowledged that his decision meant that “we‘re probably going to have to see our cases continue to go up,” he asserted that the state’s health care providers were “a lot better prepared for that now than we were over a month ago.”
But Trump on Wednesday appeared to more explicitly drew a line between Kemp’s loosening of restrictions and more coronavirus fatalities.
“Do I agree with him? No. But I respect him and I will let him make his decision,” the president told reporters. “Would I do that? No, I would keep them a little longer. I want to protect people’s lives.
“But I’m going to let him make his decision, but I told him I totally disagree.”
Trump says he told Kemp: ‘I disagree strongly’ with move to reopen Georgia
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