Trump says “he’s flexible” in holding the national convention amid a spike of new COVID-19 cases in Florida [Video]

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• In his exclusive interview with Greta Van Susteren, President Donald Trump said that he is flexible with the format of the Republican National Convention amid a surge of new coronavirus cases in Florida.
• Trump told Van Susteren that the severity of the virus outbreak in Florida would determine their approach for the August 24-27 event.
• The president’s latest comments suggested that he was being more mindful of how to manage the pandemic.

As new infections of coronavirus continue to surge, President Donald Trump said that he is “flexible” in having a traditional indoor Republican National Convention (RNC) in Jacksonville, Florida — which was previously scheduled in North Carolina if not for its state order on holding of events.

North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper’s announcement that he would only permit “a scaled-down convention with fewer people, social distancing and face coverings” made the RNC turn down its intention to officiate the GOP’s assembly in Charlotte, North Carolina.

In his exclusive interview with former Fox anchor Greta Van Susteren on Tuesday, Trump said that the severity of the pandemic would determine the appropriate format for the August 24-27 event.

“Well, we’re always looking at different things,” Trump said. “When we signed in Jacksonville, we wanted to be in North Carolina. That almost worked out, but the governor didn’t want to have people use the arena, essentially. And so I said, ‘Too bad for North Carolina.’”

The president said that Florida “looked good” when he found out that RNC announced they won’t push through in Charlotte.

“It’s spiking up a little bit… And that’s going to go down. It really depends on the timing. Look, we’re very flexible. We can do a lot of things, but we’re very flexible,” Trump told Van Susteren.

Numerous renowned Republican lawmakers, like Senators Chuck Grassley, Lamar Alexander, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Mitt Romney, have already expressed their nonattendance at the convention.

Based on the tracking by the Florida Department of Health, the cases of new coronavirus infections in the state had significantly increased within the past two weeks, climbing up to 213,794 from 100,000. The state posted daily records with more than 10,000 new cases recorded each on Saturday and Sunday.

Trump’s latest remarks implied that he was being more careful on handling the virus outbreak. Florida was among the several states that reported a spike of new COVID-19 cases. The US has over 3 million cases of coronavirus cases and more than 130,000 fatalities.

His exclusive interview ran on Atlanta-based network Gray Television, where Van Susteren is now the chief political correspondent.

Source: AOL.com