Noted Historian: Trump’s COVID-19 response “the Greatest Dereliction of Duty" in history

Historian says Trump responsible for 'greatest dereliction of duty' of any U.S. president

 By Graham Slaughter

TORONTO -- A leading American historian best known for successfully predicting every U.S. election for more than three decades says newly published revelations that U.S. President Donald Trump knew COVID-19 was deadly in the early days of the pandemic but publicly downplayed the virus says Trump’s “damning" response will go down in history.

“This is the greatest dereliction of duty in the history of the U.S. presidency,” Allan Lichtman, a professor of history at American University for nearly 50 years, told CTV News Channel on Thursday.

"I wanted to always play it down," Trump told Woodward in a subsequent interview in March. "I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic.”

The U.S. leads the world in overall cases, at more than 6.3 million, and total deaths, with more than 191,000 people dead.

As for Trump’s defence that he didn’t share how deadly the virus was because he didn’t want people to panic, Lichtman said it simply doesn’t pass the sniff test.

“What is Trump’s whole campaign based on? Causing panic. ‘Elect Joe Biden and your streets are going to burn. The criminals will be attacking your houses. The suburbs will be abolished.’ This is a guy who’s worried about causing panic? Come on. How could you possibly believe that?”

Dereliction of Duty: A serious failure to do the things that you are responsible for in your job

What me worry?