ABC News chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl is comparing covering President Trump’s indoor campaign events during the coronavirus pandemic to “taking your family with you to Fallujah.”
“This is not like embedding with the Marines in Fallujah. It is like you are taking your family with you to Fallujah,” Karl, who has reported from war zones, told the National Journal.
The comments from Karl, a former White House Correspondents’ Association president, come after the Trump campaign held an indoor campaign event in a warehouse in Nevada over the weekend, with only some of those in attendance wearing masks while social distancing guidelines were ignored, prompting criticism from the left and right.
The Trump campaign promoted the event by mocking protests while urging supporters “to gather peacefully under the 1st Amendment” to hear the president speak.
“If you can join tens of thousands of people protesting in the streets, gamble in a casino, or burn down small businesses in riots, you can gather peacefully under the 1st Amendment to hear from the President of the United States,” the campaign said in a Sunday statement leading up to the rally.
The battle for the city of Fallujah marked the fiercest urban warfare of the Iraq War in November and December 2004. At the time, the U.S. military dubbed it “some of the heaviest urban combat U.S. Marines and soldiers have been involved in since the Battle of Huế City in Vietnam in 1968.”