Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said on Sunday that his state was not going in the right direction when it came to fighting the coronavirus, attributing its failures to President Trump’s allies.
“People are not following the mitigations, because the modeling is so bad at the leadership level, the federal level,” Pritzker told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” on Sunday. “We are trying to get the word out and you’re trying to continue to convince people to do the right thing but it is the president’s allies in our state, all across the state, who are simply saying to people don’t pay any attention to the mitigations, don’t follow the rules.”
Tapper noted that Illinois had recently broken its record for the most cases recorded in a single day with over 4,500 people testing positive on Friday.
Illinois is currently in stage four of its reopening plan. A recent study showed that outbreaks of coronavirus in schools, workplaces and other facilities in the state are driving a surge of new cases, some of which have not be publicly identified.
When asked if Illinois would reverse any of its recovery plan, Pritzker said that “resurgence mitigations” would be put up on a regional basis. But he blamed Trump and his allies for setting bad examples in dealing with the virus.
“He’s modeling bad behavior. He doesn’t wear a mask in public. He has rallies where they don’t encourage people to wear masks in public,” Pritzker told Tapper. “Truly, this is now rhetoric that people understand, particularly in rural areas in my state, ‘Well, the president doesn’t wear a mask; we don’t need to wear a mask. It’s not that dangerous.’ The truth of the matter is that it is very dangerous.”