Following several tweets Monday advocating for college football to move forward with a season amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, President Trump further addressed the issue Tuesday morning during an appearance on Fox Sports Radio’s “Outkick the Coverage,” speaking with host Clay Travis on SiriusXM Radio.
“This attacks older people, very viciously by the way,” Trump said of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. “It can be if it’s the wrong person, but these football players, they’re very young, strong people, and physically, I mean they’re physically in extraordinary shape, so they’re not going to have a problem.
“You’re not going to see people, you know, could there be, could it happen? But I doubt it. You’re not going to see people dying, and many people get it, and they have, like kids, they get it, they have the sniffles. Young kids, almost none have a serious problem with it.”
The president, despite a study that found almost 100,000 children were infected in the final two weeks of July, on Monday doubled down on his false claim that children are all but immune to the virus and that schools should reopen in the fall for in-person classes.
During his radio appearance, Trump also referenced several college football coaches, including Alabama’s Nick Saban, LSU’s Ed Orgeron and the retired Lou Holtz, whom he called a supporter from the beginning, as proponents of playing this season, suggesting their expertise should be a decisive factor.
“They’re just great people, and they want to play football, and they know better than anyone else,” Trump said. “The other thing is, and somebody was explaining, I had actually one of the great doctors, he said, these people are so powerful and so strong, not lots of body fat, although you could take a couple of offensive linemen perhaps and dispute that perhaps, but not a lot of body fat, maybe none in some cases, you know, and they’re very healthy people.
“You know, people don’t realize, it’s tiny percentage of people that get sick, and they’re old. It just attacks old people, especially old people with bad heart, diabetes, some kind of a physical problem, a weight problem.”
In the United States, at least 160,000 have died after contracting the virus, and more than 5.1 million cases have been reported. Cases are escalating in most states and are surging in some. Georgia, for instance, had a 10 percent increase in new cases the past week, and Tennessee had an 8 percent spike.
By July 10, after states began to reopen, death rates also ticked up again for the first time since March, with health officials anticipating the rise given the virus had been spreading rapidly through heavily populated states such as Texas, Florida and California, all states heavily invested in college football.
Trump most recently attended the College Football Playoff championship game between top-ranked LSU and No. 3 Clemson on Jan. 13 at the Superdome in New Orleans, where he was greeted with cheers when introduced before the national anthem.
The president also attended a regular season game between LSU and Alabama in November in Tuscaloosa, Ala., getting a warm reception, as well as the Army-Navy game Dec. 19 in Philadelphia.
“So I think football is making a tragic mistake and, you know, it’s interesting, when it opens, when I went to that game, it was incredible,” Trump said of the CFP final in which LSU beat Clemson, 42-25. “I went to a couple of ‘em, and I never really did the big-time college football.
“I went to an Ivy League school [University of Pennsylvania]. It wasn’t quite the same, but when I went to Alabama and I went to LSU, and you know, these stadiums are massive. You have no idea about that. It’s much bigger crowds than the NFL.”
Trump has been critical of NFL players kneeling during the national anthem since quarterback Colin Kaepernick, then with the San Francisco 49ers, first did so in 2016 to protest police brutality and social injustice.
As protests continued across the country following the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, in May, NFL players have said they intend to kneel during the national anthem this season as well.
“In the NFL you’ll have 60 [thousand], and here, we had I think 115,000 people, and you go to see these games, and it’s brilliant football,” Trump told Travis, who has called for football to proceed during the pandemic. “It’s great football. The atmosphere, there’s nothing like it, and you can’t have empty seats.
“If I had five empty seats, for instance, they said when I do a rally, sir, the reason I won’t do them because you can’t have one seat and then seven around that seat, sir, have to be empty. Oh, that’ll look great. You have one person, and everything’s fake, empty around them. You can’t do that.
“And I don’t think, I’m not sure college football can do it, but we’ll have to see.”
