President Trump Cancels His Alabama Rally Due to COVID-19 Threat

President Donald Trump was supposed to hold a rally in Alabama next week, however, his campaign has been canceled due to the concerns of local officials. Mass gatherings are banned as the state's coronavirus infections soar.

Canceled rally

President Trump has endorsed former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville in Alabama's GOP senatorial elections against his own former attorney general, Jeff Sessions. The campaign rally was set to be held before the primary elections in Alabama later this month, but it was indefinitely postponed on June 30, according to CNN.

The communications director for President Trump's re-election campaign, Tim Murtaugh, told Independent UK that they do not ever confirm where they were looking until a rally date and location are announced. He added that there is always work underway to identify sites. Sessions were previously expected to win back his previous Senate seat in Alabama after he lost his position as attorney general, but he found himself facing a challenging bid from the former football coach who is very popular in the state.

The President has taken an interest in the election after his public row with his former attorney general. Trump described Tuberville as a terrific head football coach and a real leader who will never let MAGA or the United States down in a tweet endorsing the former football coach.

The President also wrote on Twitter in March that Tommy Tuberville will be a great Senator for the people of Alabama. He called him a winner and that Tuberville has his complete and total endorsement. Trump ended his tweet by saying that he loves Alabama. The news about the Alabama rally came after the underwhelming turnout of Trump's Tulsa campaign trail in June.

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The rally only registered 6,200 attendees while the campaign claimed that a million people registered to show up. Trump's campaign blamed the low turn-on Black Lives Matter protesters who were demonstrating against police brutality after the killing of George Floyd.

Trump's campaign manager claimed that the demonstrators prevented audience members from getting into the area, though reports showed that the demonstrators were nowhere near the place of the event.

Coronavirus in the United States

The United States reported 52, 789 new coronavirus cases on July 1. It is the largest single-day total since the start of the pandemic. President Trump speculated in a Fox Business interview that the coronavirus was going to "disappear" at some point, as reported by The Washington Post.

Medical experts say that it is unlikely unless the majority of the people are infected and have already developed immunity, which could eventually lead to millions of deaths or through the successful development of a vaccine. There is still a chance that the virus will never go away, according to some health experts.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease experts in the US, stated that one of the reasons behind the high cases is because some states were lenient during the coronavirus lockdown.

A strictly implemented lockdown is the reason why some European countries, like Italy and Spain, were able to turn the tide on the virus after three months.

According to The Washington Post more than 800,000 new coronavirus cases were detected in the country in June, and many of them in states that were quick to reopen. Since the start of the pandemic, the United States has reported more than 125,000 deaths.