“I think it’s going to work out fine,” Trump said on Feb. 19. “I think when we get into April, in the warmer weather, that has a very negative effect on that and that type of a virus.”
“The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA,” Trump tweeted five days later. “Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
The Washington Post obtained intelligence reports that issued “ominous, classified warnings in January and February about the global danger posed by the coronavirus while President Trump and lawmakers played down the threat and failed to take action that might have slowed the spread of the pathogen, according to U.S. officials familiar with spy agency reporting.”
“Donald Trump may not have been expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were — they just couldn’t get him to do anything about it,” this official said. “The system was blinking red.”
- The reports never specified when the virus might hit the United States.
- No recommendations for any protocol that public health officials should take.
- The report did show the disease originated in China and intelligence agencies did monitor the spread to other countries.
- Officials believe China downplayed the severity of the disease but so did Trump.
- Lawmakers didn’t focus on the ramifications nor severity of it either.
- Trump’s advisers struggled to get him to take the virus seriously.
- Azar couldn’t get through to Trump to speak with him about the virus until Jan. 18.
- Trump focused more on vaping.
- Before getting shown the door, Mulvaney took the disease more seriously and tried to engage a very dismissive Trump who did not believe the disease would spread throughout the U.S.
- Robert Kadlec told the Senate Intelligence Committee the virus posed a “serious threat” but offered no specific recommendations just that it would disrupt Americans’ lives.
A White House spokesman rebutted criticism of Trump’s response:
“President Trump has taken historic, aggressive measures to protect the health, wealth and safety of the American people — and did so, while the media and Democrats chose to only focus on the stupid politics of a sham illegitimate impeachment,” Hogan Gidley said in a statement. “It’s more than disgusting, despicable and disgraceful for cowardly unnamed sources to attempt to rewrite history — it’s a clear threat to this great country.”
