"The View" co-host Sunny Hostin accused President Trump on Tuesday of trying to prematurely reopen the nation's economy because closing down non-essential businesses hurts him personally. That obsession, Hostin said, is because he cares more about his hotels than American lives.
Trump has maintained while the Wuhan coronavirus is a serious issue that must be dealt with, the steps the country takes must not result in more harm to Americans than the disease itself. Having large segments of the economy come to a standstill for a longer period of time than necessary will result in a depression, which can be more devastating, Trump says.
"And we know that the U.S. unemployment rate could spike as high as 30 percent, but medical experts are adamant about staying home to stop the spread. So is there any version of this that makes sense to you all? Because it doesn’t make sense to me to encourage people, when we’re telling them stay in, to go out to — to work to scare them and saying, you know, it could be really bad and shaking your finger. I don’t know if that’s a good idea," host Whoopi Goldberg said.
"I think what the Lieutenant Governor of Texas said was despicable and disgusting. What he said was that the lives of our seniors, at least my take, are — are expendable, that they’re not worth it, that seniors would be willing to give up their lives so that their grandchildren could have a better economy. Well, guess what, my kids want their grandparents alive. My kids want that. And this is America. We can save our grandparents if we just stay at home," Hostin said.
"That is not too much to ask for, and every single health expert is advising this president to continue to tell people to stay at home. For him to just sort of, you know, flout that advice tells me that there is something in it for him, and it tells me that there’s something economic in it for him," she continued. "When you look at Trump’s personal businesses, you know that he is losing almost $500,000 a day because six out of his seven hotels are losing money. They are shuttered every day, and that is why our Founding Fathers put the emoluments clause into the Constitution because our president should be more concerned about the lives of Americans rather than aligning his own pockets and I think that’s what this is really about."
