Gov. Pritzker Blames Trump For 'New Wave' Of Coronavirus Cases

ILLINOIS — Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Sunday blamed President Donald Trump for a "new wave" of coronavirus cases across his state.

The president is "modeling bad behavior," the Illinois governor told Jake Tapper on CNN's "State of the Union." Citing the president's crowded, maskless rallies — being held just weeks after a "superspreader event" in the Rose Garden — Pritzker said Trump has "made it nearly impossible" for any state to fully reopen.

"This pandemic has been around now for seven to eight months, and without much help from the federal government we’ve been fighting it off," Pritzker said.

Hit hard early in the pandemic, in recent months Illinois has generally seen lower infection rates than the rest of the Midwest. But cases are starting to rise again across the state, hospitalizations are spiking dramatically, and the test positivity rate has crept back above the 5 percent threshold recommended by Johns Hopkins University.

Pritzker blamed the president's leadership.

"He doesn’t wear a mask in public. He has rallies where they don’t encourage people to wear masks in public. This is rhetoric that people understand, particularly in rural areas of my state, that, 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," Pritzker said. "And even if there are therapeutics that are coming online that are helping people, our hospitalizations are going up. People are having long-hauler syndrome once they're out of the hospital, even if they survive. Our death rate is increasing. We're now headed into a new wave of coronavirus all over the country, and it's very dangerous."

Pritzker said Illinois, like the rest of the country, is headed in the wrong direction. He blamed people who are ignoring mask orders and other measures meant to control the spread of the virus.

"We are trying to continue to convince people to do the right thing," Pritzker continued, "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.'"

"It is dangerous right now," Pritzker said, citing double-digit positivity rates in neighboring Wisconsin, Iowa and Indiana. "We want people to wear masks. We want people to socially distance. We need to make sure that we have certain mitigations in place. And, of course, we’ve already opened up much of our economy. But we have to maintain certain capacity limits and make sure that our people are safe and healthy."

Pritzker said that if cases continue to rise across Illinois, all 11 of the state's emergency management regions could find themselves with new restrictions on businesses and social gatherings.

"On a statewide basis, we haven't looked at increasing mitigations. But as regions flip over and need these resurgence mitigations more and more, we may end up in a situation where a majority of our regions or even all of them are in these resurgences," he said.

The governor's comments came after he and the president traded barbs on Twitter last week. After Trump tweeted that Illinois "has no place to go," Pritzker responded with a tongue-in-cheek list of places to visit in Illinois.

"First things first, enjoy a Chicago class at the one and only @TheWeiner Circle," the governor tweeted. "They have real hot dogs and real talk — all for the price of one."

And, at a rally Saturday in Janesville, Wisconsin — only about 20 minutes from the Illinois border — Trump said that "Illinois could use a new governor."

"That guy doesn't know what's happened," the president continued. "They got to open up that state. That got to open up that state. You watch what happens. On Nov. 4, they'll all say right now everybody. They're only doing this for politics. I really believe that."

On the same day, Wisconsin reported a record number of new coronavirus cases.