Padma Lakshmi calls Trump ‘criminally negligent’ for downplaying coronavirus

Padma Lakshmi urged her followers to obtain absentee ballots ahead of the upcoming election on November 3.

The 50-year-old said ‘the time to get your absentee ballot is now’ as she modeled a black-and-white VOTE face mask.

The Top Chef star then posted a screen-grab of her own tweet calling US President Donald Trump ‘criminally negligent’ for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

‘The time to get your absentee ballot is now’: Padma Lakshmi urged her followers to obtain absentee ballots ahead of the upcoming election on November 3

Absentee ballots are different from mail-in ballots, which have been the center of a controversy involving fears of voter fraud. 

‘Criminally negligent manslaughter occurs when death results from a high degree of negligence or recklessness,’ she wrote in the tweet she screen-grabbed for Instagram.

‘This administration knowingly downplayed the pandemic, continued to hold maskless rallies, completely lacked a unified federal response & now 200k loved ones are dead,’ Padma continued.

In a follow-up tweet the partner of Adam Dell did not post to Instagram she also wrote: ‘A government’s first priority is to protect the lives of its citizens and this administration failed to do that on a massive scale.’

Making her voice heard: She then posted a screen-grab of her own tweet calling U.S. President Donald Trump ‘criminally negligent’ for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic

She added: ‘This is not a partisan issue- this is a human rights issue where 200,000 Americans were killed because of extreme negligence & lack of leadership.’

So far 192K people have died in the US from COVID-19 and there are 6.42M cases. 

This week the president admitted to downplaying the severity of the pandemic earlier in the year in order to avoid sowing panic.

‘We don’t want to instill panic. We don’t want to jump up and down and start shouting that we have a problem that is a tremendous problem, scare everybody,’ he told White House reporters.

The confession came after Bob Woodward released a February tape of Trump calling the coronavirus ‘deadly stuff’ and ‘more deadly even than your strenuous flu.’

‘We don’t want to instill panic’: This week the president admitted to downplaying the severity of the pandemic earlier in the year in order to avoid sowing panic; seen on Wednesday

Woodward conducted 18 interviews with Trump for the new book, which the president consented to despite slamming the reporter in the past.

November’s election pits Trump against Joe Biden, the former U.S. Senator who served as Vice President to Barack Obama.

Biden’s running mate is U.S. Senator Kamala Harris of California while Trump is retaining his current Vice President Mike Pence.

Her love: The chef has a daughter, Krishna, with partner Adam Dell; seen at Full Frontal With Samantha Bee’s Not The White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2017