Before Trump arrived in the Grand Canyon State for his photo-op border visit and rally, Arizona Democrats held a press conference call to set the record straight on his failed coronavirus response and its impact on Arizona’s diverse communities.

On the day Arizona reported hitting a daily high mark of 3,591 new coronavirus cases, Donald Trump decided to recklessly put the lives of Arizonans in danger by hosting a rally where thousands will not abide by Phoenix’s new mask ordinance.

Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez: “Donald Trump is taking his ‘Broken Promises’ tour to Arizona, the state that is ground zero for his failures of leadership. As you know, coronavirus has surged in Arizona in recent weeks, especially in recent days, nearing 55,000 cases and setting new records for hospitalizations and ventilator use with every passing day. Over 1,300 Arizonans have already lost their lives, and today Trump is coming into town for a pep rally in two different locations. What a disgrace! He should be visiting healthcare providers and other frontline workers, brainstorming about how to reduce the incidence of coronavirus and slow the spread. This is the wrong time and the wrong place to bring together people for a political vanity project.”

Congressman Ruben Gallego (AZ-07): “Let’s be clear, right now the president should not be in Arizona. We are dealing with a very, very hard situation, where we have an increasing infection rate of COVID-19, even more so it’s severely impacting  ing  our most vulnerable communities. The growth of COVID-19 is happening in Latino communities, in working class communities. While the president is there talking about the border wall, which he’s only been able to accomplish three new miles of it, mind you after he promised Mexico would pay for it, he should probably go stop at the Yuma Medical Center and see how many of the ICU beds there are taken by COVID patients, or he should go and talk to the unemployment office to see how many people are unemployed because he missmanged this whole situation to the point that the pandemic ended up affecting the economy.”

House Minority Leader State Representative Charlene Fernandez (LD-04): “We could have opened up and been safe. At that time, my ZIP code was registering 20 positive COVID cases. 20. One month later, we’re at more than 250 per day. We automatically went from 20 to over a 1,000 in a two month period. It has been just demoralizing for the people that are here in Arizona, for the people here in Yuma, for people that work at our hospitals, and mostly for our food chain […] So, we have essential workers that are going out into the fields day, after day, after day picking the vegetables that you eat. But they’re getting sick and there’s not enough tests.”

State Representative Alma Hernandez (LD-03): “When the CDC says, ‘Do not have gatherings of more than ten people,’ I think that’s something that as leaders we have to abide by. When our cities and towns are asking us to wear masks, it’s for a reason, it’s for a reason, it’s to keep people and the vulnerable safe, so it’s very important for us to acknowledge that COVID is real, it’s very much still alive in our communities, it’s disproportionately affecting the Hispanic and Latino and Native American communities. In Arizona, we have the Navajo nation, which is in our backyard here in Arizona, and the president is not talking about the fact that so many of the communities in Navajo nation have been decimated by COVID. You know, the fact that they’ve had to go on lockdowns in their community  because they just don’t know how to handle this right now. It’s very frustrating that we’re in this situation.”