Chairman of the joint chiefs warns coronavirus will NOT be over by Easter warning military is planning for up to four MONTHS of crisis – unlike his boss Donald Trump
- The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley anticipated the coronavirus crisis to last three months, he said at the Pentagon Tuesday
- President Trump said during a Fox News Channel interview in the Rose Garden Tuesday that he’d like to see America reopened for business by Easter, April 12
- Defense Secretary Mark Esper also talked of a longer timeline, saying that he thought coronavirus would be a problem for an eight to 10-week period
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The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley anticipated the coronavirus crisis could last another three months – stretching until almost the Fourth of July, instead of Easter, which President Trump referenced Tuesday.
‘You’re looking at eight to 10, maybe 12 weeks, something like that, call it three months,’ Milley said at the Pentagon Tuesday, according to Fox News. ‘Some of it depends on what we do as a nation to mitigate it, to flatten the curve so to speak. But we, the United States military, we’re going to do this as long as the mission takes.’
During a Fox News Channel interview in the Rose Garden, Trump had said he’d like the American economy back online by Easter Sunday, April 12.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley (right) said Tuesday that he believed the coronavirus crisis could carry on another three months. Defense Secretary Mark Esper (left) floated an eight to 10 week period
President Trump (left) told Fox News Channel’s Bill Hemmer (right) that he wanted to get American businesses opened back up by Easter
‘I’d love to have it open by Easter. I would love to have it opened by Easter,’ the president told Fox News’ Bill Hemmer. ‘I will tell you what right now. It’s such an important day for other reasons, but I will make it an important day for this. I would love to have the country opened up, and they are just raring to go, by Easter.’
He doubled down on that timeline during Tuesday evening’s White House briefing with reporters.
In recent days, Trump has grown impatient with his administration’s policy of ’15 days to slow the spread’ of coronavirus.
He’s floated pushing some segments of the American population to go back to work.
‘We can’t let the cure be worse than the problem,’ Trump said at the White House press briefing Monday.
Allies and rivals alike have criticized the rush.
‘It’s incredible that this has to be said: Letting thousands of people needlessly suffer and die is wrong. It’s also not a recipe for rescuing the economy,’ Hillary Clinton, Trump’s 2016 Democratic opponent, tweeted Tuesday.
Liz Cheney, the third most powerful Republican in the House of Representatives, sang a similar tune.
‘There will be no normally functioning economy if our hospitals are overwhelmed and thousands of Americans of all ages, including our doctors and nurses, lay dying because we have failed to do what’s necessary to stop the virus,’ Cheney tweeted Tuesday.
Beyond Milley, Defense Secretary Mark Esper also predicted the crisis to last beyond April.
‘It looks like it has an eight to 10 week period,’ Esper said. ‘We need to plan for this to be a few months long, at least, and we are taking precutionary measure to do that, to be in it for the long haul,’ Esper told reporters at the Pentagon Tuesday.