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The BBC mentions that

At his Friday briefing, [Trump] said some measures imposed by Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia had been "too tough".

Earlier, he wrote in a series of tweets: "LIBERATE MINNESOTA", "LIBERATE MICHIGAN" and then "LIBERATE VIRGINIA".

[...]

Demonstrations calling on authorities to end the shutdown have occurred in Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, Minnesota, Utah, Virginia and Kentucky.

The states Mr Trump referred to in Friday's tweets are all led by Democrats. Ohio and Utah, which he did not mention, have Republican governors. [...] Trump followed those incendiary tweets by criticising New York's Andrew Cuomo, another Democrat, for mishandling the pandemic and spending too much time "complaining".

And then the BBC article goes into a long background story on the protests. But it's not clear from there which of those measures (criticized by protesters) Trump himself thought were "too tough". So has he been more explicit in that respect?

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    Does Trump have a fully detailed and consistent position about anything, let alone free speech?
    – Golden Cuy
    Commented Apr 18, 2020 at 12:47
  • @AndrewGrimm: I think that's a bit of a red herring here. It doesn't matter (for this q) if his positions are consistent over time or not. He could have quipped some example as to what though was too "too tough", or some journalist could have inquired about it later on at a press conference. (If he's gonna write something completely different about the topic in his memoirs is something interesting on another level, but I'm not asking that here.)
    – time takes its toll
    Commented Apr 19, 2020 at 20:28

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So has he been more explicit in that respect?

Not really. He's kind of been vague about it:

When he was first asked about the protesters, Trump lamented that people have been “going through it a long time… and it’s been a tough process for people.”

“There’s death and there’s problems in staying at home too,” Trump said. “It’s not just, ‘Isn’t it wonderful to stay at home?’ They’re suffering. This country wasn’t built on that principle. It was built on an exact opposite principle, actually.”

Trump then said he watched “in one particular state where they want to get back.”

“There were very strict sanctions that were put on people that was probably the most strict of all,” Trump said, leaving the state unnamed. “But I just think the American people have been incredible.”

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    I'm accepting this as-is given the context that I've asked the question in. But more recently Trump declared that what Fauci's said about reopening schools was "completely unacceptable", so that's a concrete example of something Trump (now) considers too tough of a lockdown measure, although such things are time- and context-dependent/sensitive.
    – time takes its toll
    Commented May 17, 2020 at 23:53
  • Okay. That makes sense. Might be a good thing for me to add at some point when I get a chance.
    – user29681
    Commented May 17, 2020 at 23:55

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