One of President Donald Trunp’s top economic advisers is suggesting that all Americans wear “space outfits” so the country can reopen for business despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
Stephen Moore, a member of Trump’s economic task force, made the comment during an interview with the New York Times‘ Lisa Lerer, published Wednesday.
Moore, who recently compared anti-lockdown protesters to Rosa Parks, has been pushing for the Trump administration and governors to loosen stay-at-home orders.
In a Q&A about the economic impacts of the COVID-19 crisis, Lerer asked Moore about the fact that African-Americans are more likely to get sick and die from the virus.
“The people who are suffering the most are minorities. There’s no question about that,” Moore said. “By the way, that’s in no small part because minorities tend to be living in major cities where they’re living close together. But they also are the people — I mean, look at the people in the soup lines and the people waiting for The Salvation Army trucks. I mean, they are minorities as well. They are the ones whose lives have been really shattered.
“We can use really good public safety measures, social distancing the work force, disinfectants everywhere, masks,” Moore added. “I was thinking this morning, and this is just kind of a thought experiment because I was thinking about this — why don’t we just put everybody in a space outfit or something like that? No. Seriously, I mean —
Lerer responded by saying, “Well, we’d have to make the space outfits, right?”
“I know we don’t have space outfits [laughter]— I mean, just thinking out loud, and maybe this is a crazy idea, but instead of just locking down the economy, putting everybody in a kind of — you’re right,” Moore said. “You have to make 200 million of these, but it wouldn’t have cost $3 trillion to do that. And you can have for months people just walking around in these kind of — I mean, I was looking online, and there are all these kinds of suits that they’re building now that you’re not exposed and you’re breath — kind of ventilator.”
Read the full interview here.
