On Sunday, President Trump answered questions for nearly two hours at a Fox News Virtual Town Hall, televised from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. (
Transcript of full Town Hall.) Here is what the President had to say about state restrictions on in-person worship services:
VIEWER: Hi, Mr. President. My husband and I both work at our local church, and I think a lot of us churchgoers are just wondering when we might be able to get back to an in-person church service. Do you have any idea when this might be?
THE PRESIDENT: I hope it’s going to be very soon, because I’m seeing things that I don’t like seeing. I see some churches — they are literally staying in their car with the window closed. I guess it comes out through the radio, the service. And they were getting arrested, and they’re sitting in a car, and the cars are even far away. And they say, “Close your windows.” So it has to come in electronically, and I’m saying, “Why can’t they do that?”
Or they’ll go in a field, some field, and they’ll be — they’ll have a good minister, pastor, or could be a rabbi, could be a person of faith, and what happens is, in some places — not in all places — I would say in most places they really sympathize. But I do.
And I’ve been listening to services over the last four or five weeks. Some very, very good people. And everybody knows who I’ve been listening to. And we go different person. Last week it was Cardinal Dolan at St Patrick’s Cathedral, a place I’m very familiar with. But we’ve had pastors and ministers.
I will say this: It’s wonderful to watch people over a laptop, but it’s not like being at a church. And we have to get our people back to churches, and we’re going to start doing it soon.
Q The Attorney General sent a memo directing U.S. attorneys to be on the lookout for health restrictions that could interfere with constitutional rights. There are a lot of people who cheered that because, you know, they do want to go back to church, and as you’re talking about. But there are others who fear he might be encouraging people to do things that might be unsafe at the time when some states are going up.
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah. No, he’s not — well, there’s not too many states that I know of that are going up. Almost everybody is headed in the right direction....
