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Expressing concerns about COVID-19’s increasing spread, the Tulsa City-County Health Department’s director said he wishes the campaign rally for President Donald Trump at the BOK Center on June 20 would be pushed back to a later date.

In an interview with the Tulsa World on Saturday, Dr. Bruce Dart said Tulsa is seeing a “significant increase in our case trends” that makes a large gathering like the rally dangerous for not only attendees, but the president himself.

“I think it’s an honor for Tulsa to have a sitting president want to come and visit our community, but not during a pandemic,” said Dart. “I’m concerned about our ability to protect anyone who attends a large, indoor event, and I’m also concerned about our ability to ensure the president stays safe as well.”

State officials on Saturday reported 225 new cases of COVID-19, once again marking a new high in daily increases for both the state and Tulsa County.

“COVID is here in Tulsa, it is transmitting very efficiently,” Dart said. “I wish we could postpone this to a time when the virus isn’t as large a concern as it is today.”

Dart said his concern stems from a sudden spike in cases he said likely comes from a combination of factors, but not increased testing. Health department data shows Tulsa County’s 7-day rolling average for COVID-19 cases has risen from 24.9 cases on June 7 to 51.4 as of Friday.

About the same number of people have been tested for COVID-19 in Tulsa for the past few weeks, and Dart said several highly attended private events and “quarantine fatigue” have led to back-to-back record high numbers of new Tulsa County cases reported Friday and Saturday.

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President Donald Trump is coming to town this week for a campaign rally.

It will be his first since such events were suspended earlier this year because of the COVID-19 shutdown.

We don’t know why he chose Tulsa, but we can’t see any way that his visit will be good for the city.

Tulsa is still dealing with the challenges created by a pandemic. The city and state have authorized reopening, but that doesn’t make a mass indoor gathering of people pressed closely together and cheering a good idea. There is no treatment for COVID-19 and no vaccine. It will be our health care system that will have to deal with whatever effects follow.

The public health concern would apply whether it were Donald Trump, Joe Biden or anyone else who was planning a mass rally at the BOK.

This is the wrong time.

Tulsa and the nation remain on edge after the May 25 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Trump, a divisive figure, will attract protests, the vast majority of which we expect to be peaceful. But there may also be confrontation and inappropriate behavior from some. His 2016 Tulsa rally provoked a heated response for some, and his ability to provoke opponents has only grown since then.

Again, Tulsa will be largely alone in dealing with what happens at a time when the city’s budget resources have already been stretched thin.

There’s no reason to think a Trump appearance in Tulsa will have any effect on November’s election outcome in Tulsa or Oklahoma. It has already concentrated the world’s attention of the fact that Trump will be rallying in a city that 99 years ago was the site of a bloody race massacre.

This is the wrong place for the rally.

When the president of the United States visits your city, it should be exciting. We think a Trump visit will be, but for a lot of the wrong reasons, and we can’t welcome it.

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Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.) said Monday that the decision by the Trump campaign to require medical waivers for attendees at an upcoming rally is an indicator that it's too early to start holding large-scale events again.

“I’ve dealt with evidence and clues for a long time in my career,” Demings, the first woman to serve as chief of the Orlando Police Department, said on ABC's "The View." “When you have to sign a medical waiver saying that you won’t hold the president responsible if you contract COVID-19, it's a pretty good clue that the president should not be holding a rally."

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Six staffers working on President Donald Trump's rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, have tested positive for coronavirus, the Trump campaign said Saturday.

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A few hours before the event, the campaign disclosed that six Trump campaign staff members who had been working on the rally had tested positive for the coronavirus during a routine screening. Mr. Trump, who was made aware of the sick campaign aides before departing for the rally, was incensed that the news was made public, according to two people familiar with his reaction.

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Six staffers working on President Donald Trump's rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, have tested positive for coronavirus

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Mr. Trump ... was incensed that the news was made public

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Donald Trump and Mike Pence have scrapped plans to address an outdoor rally at the president's campaign event in Tulsa, Oklahoma, following reports of low attendance and a thinner-than-expected crowd inside the arena.

The campaign was set to address an "overflow" crowd that has since dwindled. On Friday, campaign director Brad Parscale touted an outdoor stage that was being built for the president.

"This will be the 1st time that POTUS speaks to BOTH crowds in person - inside & outside," he said on Twitter. "If you come to the rally and don't get into the BOK Center before it's full, you can still see the President in person!"

In a campaign statement, spokesperson Tim Murtaugh said "protesters interfered with supporters, even blocking access to metal detectors, which prevented people from entering the rally."

"Radical protesters, coupled with a relentless onslaught from the media, attempted to frighten off the president's supporters," he claimed.

One woman who was peacefully protesting while sitting on the ground outside the arena was arrested, after the campaign asked the Tulsa Police Department to remove her from the area.

Tulsa officials had anticipated 100,000 people in its downtown for the rally. The BOK Centre has a capacity of roughly 19,000 people. Roughly 400,000 people live in Tulsa, and the state's population is around 4 million people.

On 15 June, the president claimed that nearly 1 million had requested tickets to the rally.

Reports from outside and inside the rally in the hours before the president was set to appear, typically carnival-like events with crowds lined up for hours waiting to enter, show the area had yet to reach capacity.

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I will feel no particular sorrow for those who attend the rally and sicken. I won't even feel any sorrow if they die.

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Speaking at the Trump campaign's rally in Tulsa on Saturday night, the president's son Eric Trump referred to Black Lives Matter protesters as "animals".

Telling supporters that there is no family other than the Trumps that will work harder for them, he said they will preserve "the moral fabric of the country" .

He continued: "Because when you watch the nonsense on TV, when you see these animals literally taking over our cities, burning down churches, this isn't America."

"They represent the smallest fraction of our society", he added, saying that Americans do not support that kind of behaviour.

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Standing with his wife, Lara, Mr Trump Jr went on to say that they will also protect religious liberty.


"We are going to say 'Merry Christmas', which is totally under assault," he said

He also promised to protect the second amendment.

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Originally posted by jon-nyc:

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He then turns to Ilhan Omar, the congresswoman from Minnesota. Omar is an American citizen but he refers to “her country” as Somalia. There are loud boos for Omar, who is Muslim.

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2. In that they are humans, and by and large completely swindled by the *sshole in chief, I do feel a little sorry for them. But only just.

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President Trump complained that coronavirus testing in the United States — which began later in the pandemic than it did in other countries — is driving up the numbers of confirmed infections, and he said he told his advisers to test people more slowly, even though experts agree that robust testing is the best way to control the pandemic.

“Here’s the bad part: When you do testing to that extent you’re going to find more people, you’re going to find more cases,'' he said. “So I said to my people, slow the testing down, please. They test and they test.''

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Originally posted by ShiroKuro:

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I will feel no particular sorrow for those who attend the rally and sicken. I won't even feel any sorrow if they die.

1. Well, yeah, except that they probably won't just sit quietly in their homes until the end, they'll clog up the hospitals etc. etc., using up resources and risking the health and lives of medical workers.

2. In that they are humans, and by and large completely swindled by the *sshole in chief, I do feel a little sorry for them. But only just.