The Trump administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic
has been a deliberate disaster from the beginning.
But don't take my word for it, just look at the facts.
In 2018, Trump let the pandemic preparedness office
in the National Security Council simply dissolve.
And followed up with budget cuts
to Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control
this year.
That team's job had been to follow a pandemic playbook
written after global leaders fumbled their response to Ebola
in 2014.
Trump was briefed on the playbook's existence in his first year.
Had he listened, the government would have started getting
equipment to doctors two months before the virus hit our shores.
The initial outbreak of the coronavirus began in Wuhan, China,
in December 2019.
"Well at first they, I think the
authorities in Wuhan weren't quite sure what they were facing,
but once they realized that there were so many victims
from one market on New Year's Day,
January 1st, they ordered that market shut down.
By mid-January 2020, the White House had intelligence reports that
warned of a likely pandemic. On January 18th,
HHS secretary Azar spoke with Trump to emphasize the threat
of the virus,
just as US diplomats were being evacuated from Wuhan.
Two days later the virus was confirmed in both
the United States and South Korea.
"We have it totally under control, it's one person coming in from China."
That week, South Korean officials immediately drafted
medical companies to develop test kits for mass production.
The World Health Organization declared a global health
emergency. But Donald Trump did nothing.
As Hubei Province went on lockdown,
Trump, who loves any excuse to enact a racist travel ban,
barred entry of any foreigners coming from China.
This was hardly proactive, but took no additional
steps to prepare for infection in the United States. He said,
"Well we pretty much shut it down coming in from China."
Trump didn't ramp up production of test kits so we could
begin isolating the virus.
By February, the United States had 14 confirmed cases
but the Centers for Disease Control's test kits proved faulty.
There weren't enough of them and they were restricted to only people
showing symptoms. The United States' pandemic response
was already failing.
Trump then began actively downplaying the crisis
and baselessly predicting it would go away
when the weather got warmer.
"You know a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat,
as the heat comes in. Typically that will go away in April.
We're in great shape, though."
Trump decided there was nothing to see here,
and on February 24th took time out of his day to remind us
that the stock market was soaring.
A day later, Centers for Disease Control officials
sounded the alarm that daily life could be severely disrupted.
"Current global circumstances suggest it's likely that
this virus will cause a pandemic."
The window to get ahead of the virus by testing
and containment was closing.
Trump's next move?
"The flu in our country kills from 25,000 people
to 69,000 people a year."
He compared coronavirus to the seasonal flu,
and he called the emerging crisis a hoax by the Democrats.
"And this is their new hoax."
Trump declined to call for a national emergency because,
"Because I really think we're in, you know,
extremely good shape."
Meanwhile, South Korea was now on its way to testing
a quarter million people
When a cruise ship containing Americans with coronavirus
floated toward San Francisco, Trump said,
"I don't need to have the numbers double
because of one ship.
That wasn't our fault."
He didn't want people coming off the ship to be tested
because they'd make the numbers look bad.
It wasn't until the stock market reacted to the growing crisis
and took a nosedive that Trump finally declared
a national emergency.
"To unleash the full power of the federal government
that this effort today, I am offically declaring a national emergency."
By this time, South Korea had been using an app
for over a month that pulled government data to track cases
and alert users to stay away from infected areas.
"To ease people's anxieties, college students in South Korea
came up with an idea to make a map showing the locations
that confirmed patients have visited."
Here, we did nothing.
Over the next weeks, as the virus began its exponential
spread across the United States, and governors declared
states of emergency,
closing schools and workplaces,
and stopping the American economy in its tracks.
"This is something we have not seen in modern times.
Life in this country, really changing in unimaginable ways."
Trump passed on every opportunity to get ahead of this crisis.
His priority was never public health,
it was about making the virus seem like less of a nuisance
so that the numbers would look good for his reelection.
Only when the stock market crashed did Trump finally
begin to pay attention.
and mostly to bailing out big corporations
in the form of a massive $500 billion slush fund,
rather than helping ordinary Americans.
And then, with much of America finally and belatedly in lockdown,
he said at a Fox News town hall,
"I would love to have the country opened up
and just raring to go by Easter."
At every point Trump has used this crisis to compliment himself.
"I like this stuff, I really get it.
People are surprised that I understand it.
Maybe I have a natural ability,
maybe I should have done that instead of running for president."
"Number one on Facebook,
did you know I was number one of Facebook?
I mean I just found out I'm number one on Facebook."
But this is not leadership.
This is the exact opposite of leadership.
"Dr. Fauci said earlier this week that the lag in testing
was in fact a failing.
Do you take responsibility for that? And when can you guarantee
every single American who needs a test will be able to have a test?
What's the date of that?"
"Yeah, no, I don't take responsibility at all."