Senior Trump official warns people at 'high risk' for coronavirus not to attend rally

A senior Trump campaign official has advised those at high risk of severe illness from Covid-19 not to attend the president’s campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma as coronavirus cases in the state continue to spike and tensions in the city rise before the event on Saturday.

Marc Lotter, the Trump campaign’s director of strategic communications, told the Guardian he would encourage those in “high risk categories” to watch the rally on television, but defended the president’s decision to hold a mass indoor rally during the pandemic, despite local health officials urging the campaign to reschedule.

“I personally would encourage anyone who might find themselves to be in one of the high risk categories and encourage them not to come. Watch it on television, protect yourself, protect your family if someone in your direct family has those kinds of high risk factors,” Lotter said in an interview outside Tulsa’s 19,000 capacity BOK arena, where Trump is due to appear.

The CDC lists high-risk individuals as those over the age of 65, people living in care facilities or nursing homes, and those with certain underlying health conditions.

The Trump campaign’s public event invitation offers no guidance on those at greater risk, and requires attendees to agree to a waiver acknowledging they will not hold the campaign and other entities liable should they contract the virus.

On Tuesday, about 70 Trump supporters were already camped outside the arena, some arriving as early as six days before the event. Many, including 81 year-old Larry Applegate, were over the age of 65.

Applegate argued without evidence that coronavirus death statistics, currently at 116,862 in the US, had been inflated and that he was not worried about entering the arena, even without a face mask.

“I’m not worried today, whatsoever,” he said.

Lotter said the rally was a “great example of democracy” and that attendees, who will be supplied with face masks and have their temperatures checked, would be given the “information … the resources to be able to protect themselves”.

“I trust the American people to be smart enough to not have to have the government tell them what to do with every step of their lives,” Lotter said.

Earlier in the week, Tulsa’s top public health official, Bruce Dart, urged the campaign to postpone the event, and cautioned during a news conference: “Coming together is a definite possibility of seeing increased infections and increased deaths from those infections.”

On Wednesday, Oklahoma saw a record number of Covid-19 cases, 259 declared in a single day, as Tulsa itself also reported a record high of 96 new daily cases.

Asked by the Guardian to respond to Dart’s calls for the rally to be rescheduled, Lotter said: “We’ve got this venue booked. We’re looking forward to having the president here, and we’re going to thank the people of Tulsa for the great hospitality.”

Trump’s rally, rescheduled from Friday to Saturday, has also drawn significant criticism from the city’s African American community. The rally now comes the day after Juneteenth celebrations, a day marking the final emancipation of slaves in America in 1865, and in the midst of a national reckoning on state violence against black communities following the police killing of unarmed African American man George Floyd in Minneapolis.

A number of counter-protests are planned in Tulsa on the day of Trump’s rally, which is being held less than a mile from the historic Greenwood neighborhood, the site of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre. Many businesses plan to close for the weekend as tension mounts and police warm of road closures.

“You know, it’s ironic that we’ve seen so many, especially in the national media praise protesters who are out rioting and looting in some cases, and yet they have the completely opposite take on expressing our constitutional right to assemble and have free speech,” Lotter said.