In bizarro interview, Trump says he's not allowed to hold 'big' rallies in Democrat-run states, including Michigan

A sweaty, combative, and evasive President Donald Trump sat down with Fox News anchor Chris Wallace for an interview that aired Sunday to discuss everything from Joe Biden's competency ("Biden can't put two sentences together," he said) to falsely claiming that the United States has the “best mortality rate” when it comes to the coronavirus (we actually have the eighth highest in the world, sir). He also said that both World Wars were "beautiful" wars and doubled down on his confounding claim that the rise in coronavirus cases in the U.S. are a result of too much testing and not, well, the spread of coronavirus.

"We find cases and many of those cases heal automatically,” Trump told Wallace. "We’re finding — in a way, we’re creating trouble. Certainly, we are creating trouble for the fake news to come along and say, “Oh, we have more cases."

Well, another way "we have more cases" is through large indoor gatherings of mostly unmasked people who are failing to practice social distancing. Such was the scene last month when Trump held a controversial rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which, despite being under-attended — thanks to alleged TikTok teens and K-Pop fans for RSVP'ing to the event and not showing up — still saw an estimated 6,200 MAGA devotees cheering for the president, who appeared to successfully drink a glass of water with one hand under one roof. Tulsa health officials say it is “likely” that large gatherings, such as Trump's rally, led to an increase in cases earlier this month.

Ahead of Trump's Tulsa rally, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer told the Associated Press that she would seriously consider putting a kibosh on a similar event here should Trump attempt to ignore the state's coronavirus guidelines, including those restrictions on crowd sizes for indoor and outdoor gatherings.

"We know that congregating without masks, especially at an indoor facility, is the worst thing to do in the midst of a global pandemic,” Whitmer said. “I just know we have limitations on the number of people that can gather and that we’re taking this seriously."

According to Trump, he did, in fact, try and hold a rally here, as well as some other Democrat-led states, and, to his surprise, was turned down. Oh, yeah. He addressed this non-issue as a meandering response to Wallace's question as to whether Trump believes Biden is "senile."

"Look, I built the greatest economy in history, I'm now doing it again. You see the numbers; the numbers are through the roof. The Democrats are purposely keeping their schools closed, keeping their states closed. I called Michigan, I want to have a big rally in Michigan," Trump said. "Do you know we're not allowed to have a rally in Michigan? Do you know we're not allowed to have a rally in Minnesota? Do you know we're not allowed to have a rally in Nevada? We're not allowed to have rallies."

Whitmer spokeswoman Tiffany Brown said no one from the Trump campaign approached the governor's office about holding a rally.

On Friday, Trump held his "first ever TELE-Rally," during which Trump addressed Wisconsin supporters via a 23-minute telephone call.

"I wanted to be with you, and this is really replacing our rallies that we all love so much," Trump said, adding that until coronavirus is "solved" it's "going to be tough to have those big massive rallies, so I'm doing telephonic rallies, and we'll call them the Trump rallies, but we'll do it by telephone."


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