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Stephen Moore, an economic adviser to President Donald Trump, recently compared those protesting against social-distancing restrictions to an icon of the civil rights movement.
“This is a great time for civil disobedience. We need to be the Rosa Parks and protest against these government injustices,” he said in a YouTube interview last week.
Watch:The moment a lockdown protester tells health-care workers to ‘go to China’
Moore, who has been pounding the table on the need for the U.S. economy to be reopened for business immediately, delivered his gloomy take on Monday on Yahoo Finance:
“ ‘Summer is going to be a disaster under any scenario. This disaster will be really brutal.’ ”
On a positive note, Moore said he believes that late August and early September could show signs of recovery, as long as the country gets back to work by the end of the month.
“If we wait until June or July, you can write off not just 2020, but the first half of 2021,” he said. “That’s why I’ve been such a bull on getting the economy open quickly. Really it’s just heartbreaking. We are facing real devastation here, and the human toll is growing with each passing day.”
Watch the full interview:
At last check, there are more than 782,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the U.S., with a total of 41,816 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. Globally, there are 2.47 million cases.
The uncertainty weighted on the stock market on Monday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -2.44% , S&P 500 SPX, -1.78% and Nasdaq Composite COMP, -1.03% all closing deep in the red. Still, the major indexes are all double-digits off their March lows.
Read:‘The world’s more screwed up’ than the market’s reflecting, billionaire warns
