Conway says Trump wants protesters to follow social distancing guidelines

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Monday that President Trump wants the state-based protests that he has encouraged against coronavirus restrictions to follow federal social distancing guidelines to prevent the spread.

“We need physical distancing of six feet, wear that face covering, that mask,” Conway said on Fox News’s “America’s Newsroom.”

Fox News’s Sandra Smith pointed out that in footage and photographs of the protests, numerous activists are visibly not abiding by those guidelines.

Conway acknowledged the lapses but argued that governors such as Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer (D) had “physically distanced from common sense” and said without evidence some unnamed state leaders had been “more concerned about controlling the population than protecting them.”

LISTEN: @KellyannePolls comments on expectations of reopening the economy amid nationwide protests of state-issued stay-at-home orders #nine2noon pic.twitter.com/TNJx3qJekJ

— America’s Newsroom (@AmericaNewsroom) April 20, 2020

Trump tweeted calls last week to “liberate” Virginia, Minnesota and Michigan amid demonstrations there and defended the protests at his daily press briefing.

Meanwhile, Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House coronavirus task force, warned Monday that such gatherings could do further harm to the economy by prolonging the time before businesses can reopen.

“Clearly this is something that is hurting from the standpoint of economics and the standpoint of things that have nothing to do with the virus, but unless we get the virus under control, the real recovery economically is not going to happen,” Fauci said on “Good Morning America.”

“So what you do if you jump the gun and go into a situation where you have a big spike, you’re going to set yourself back,” he added. “So as painful as it is to go by the careful guidelines of gradually phasing into a reopening, it’s going to backfire. That’s the problem.”