There is a reason why some republicans are now promoting getting vaccinated. They are beginning to realize that the real culture wars which will determine who has control of both or either chamber of Congress after the midterms of 2022 will be three things: (1) the insurrection, the big lie, and written objections to counting valid, state certified electoral college votes from a free and fair election devoid of widespread voter fraud (2) the pandemic, the former guy and the Republican Party’s management and response to the pandemic, the fact that the vast majority of those who refuse to be vaccinated are white republicans which is clearly due to republicans in Congress and in the media opposing vaccination, the fact that the refusal of these white republicans to get vaccinated is resulting in new variants and is also resulting in the pandemic being a live political issue in the 2022 midterms, and (3) job creation. The first two are close to 70/30 issues where near 70% of the electorate supports our position. The economy is clearly coming back. The potential difficulty, of course, results from the refusal of republican voters to get vaccinated. This causes the virus to circulate more among our population and that causes more transmissible variants to appear. If we never reach herd immunity due to these republicans who refuse to get vaccinated, then the economy may not recover as well as it would otherwise. However, voters will understand that.
Dartagnan’s outstanding diary documented republicans in the media who opposed getting vaccinated. This diary examines what credit Trump deserves since Tuberville (he who did not even know the 3 branches of the federal government ) says that Trump supporters who refuse to get vaccinated won’t get vaccinated unless Trump is given credit for his efforts in the prior administration. This diary sets out to make sure that Trump gets every bit of the credit he deserves for sabotaging every part of the effort to contain the virus and for sabotaging the vaccination efforts in particular.
Tuberville stated that these republican skeptics won’t get vaccinated until the former guy gets credit
But what did Donald Trump done to combat and contain the virus and get the vaccines created, produced in large numbers, and distributed ? Dr. Fauci showed he was willing to say or do anything that might get more people vaccinated because that will save lives. I understand that. I understand his noble motives. However, let’s consider whether the facts support the claim that Donald Trump deserves a ‘considerable amount of credit’ for getting people vaccinated. The vast majority of those who have been vaccinated in this country took the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. They were created prior to Operation Warp Speed. There was no federal stockpile of vaccines left for when President Biden took office. The biggest order of vaccine went to AstraZeneca and the biggest financial investment was made for the GlaxoSmithKline vaccine. Neither of these panned out.
Moderna and Pfizer were created prior to Operation Warp Speed and the largest order and the biggest financial investments went to vaccines which did not pan out
They were happy to cheer for Trump even though both the Pfizer/BioNTech vand Moderna vaccines were actually created months before Trump started the program, Pfizer actually received no funds for developing its vaccine, and the two biggest investments that Operation Warp Speed made—to Sanofi/GlaxoSmithKline and Novavax—have yet to produce one dose of available vaccine. Still, there were vaccines. And Trump had funded vaccines. So vaccines … yah!
Once, again, Mark Sumner points out that the largest order and the biggest financial investment from Operation Warp Speed went to vaccines that did not pan and Operation Warp Speed was generally a failure
The biggest order Operation Warp Speed placed was for the AstraZeneca vaccine. The biggest investment it made was in the GlaxoSmithKline vaccine. Both of those have turned out to be very bad bets, and the way that these deals were structured guarantee that Americans will not have adequate vaccine for months.
Still, Operation Warp Speed has fumbled badly on every point. When it comes to the logistics that Trump bragged about for months, the general in charge has already admitted failure. But it’s those two other goals—promoting vaccine development and securing an adequate supply for the nation—where Operation Warp Speed really stumbled. And that failure goes back to a pair of decisions that were made early on, which are translating into hundreds of millions of missing doses now.
The biggest investment that Operation Warp Speed made was for a COVID-19 vaccine with one real distinction: It doesn’t work.
Mark also pointed out that Trump had been artificially inflating the delivery numbers
.
Then, as The Washington Post reported just five days before Joe Biden took office, it turned out there was no federal stockpile. Instead, the Trump White House had been artificially inflating the apparent level of delivery by “taking second doses for the two-dose regimen directly off the manufacturing line.”
Now, who is refusing to take the vaccine ? The majority of those who have refused the vaccine are white Republicans. The people who refuse to take the vaccine are the same extremists who support the insurrection and that President Joe Biden cheated and did not win a fair and free election. Up to 70+% of republicans believe that Donald Trump actually won the election and that Joe Biden is only president because of illegal cheating. Who are these people ?
Forty five percent of Republican voters approve of the insurrectionists, a plurality of republicans. Donald Trump now says that he regrets condemning the insurrection.
.
.First, he regrets condemning the insurrection because of course he does :
.
.Trump will not resign — and regrets posting video condemning the violent insurrection he incited: NYT
."At the White House, Mr. Trump struck a defiant tone, insisting that he would remain a potent force in American politics even as aides and allies abandoned him and his post-presidential prospects turned increasingly bleak. Behind closed doors, he made clear that he would not resign and expressed regret about releasing a video on Thursday committing to a peaceful transition of power and condemning the violence at the Capitol that he had egged on a day before," The New York Times reported Friday evening.
.
.
.Here are the awful gory details revealing the abject moral failures of republican voters :
.Thirty-five per cent of Republicans, by comparison, told YouGov that president-elect Biden was most to blame.
Asked whether or not they thought the violence was a threat to democracy, 27 per cent of Republicans surveyed said it was, and 68 per cent said it was not.
When asked the same question, 93 per cent of Democrats surveyed said they believed Wednesday’s chaos was a threat to democracy. While among all registered voters, 62 per cent said the riot was a threat.
Almost half of Republicans support rioters who stormed the US Capitol building on Wednesday, a new poll claims.
Among Republicans who responded to the survey carried out by YouGov, some 45 per cent said they supported the rioters who scaled walls, overcame Capitol police, stormed Congress, smashed windows, and planted explosives.
Why in the hell would anybody think that these people would listen to President Biden whom they believe stole the election or other democrats who participated in stealing the election ? President Biden has been clear that the novel coronavirus is very dangerous including variants, has promoted wearing a mask and has done so himself unlike the former guy who mocked wearing a mask, is promoting taking the vaccines and did so publicly unlike the former guy who in an act of world class nuttiness did so secretly. The only people that they would listen to are radical republicans. However, Trump hasn’t and won’t promote getting vaccinated and the vast majority of radical republicans in Congress or in the media oppose it. Moreover, we need to consider the history of Donald Trump’s response to the pandemic.
The following is an incomplete summary of Donald Trump’s response to the novel coronavirus. I will document the statements here which I make. Donald Trump minimized the novel coronavirus knowing that it was contagious and deadly. He prioritized the economy over containing the damage done by the virus because he prioritized his re-election over containing the damage done by the virus. He took actions that he thought might help the economy which put the lives of Americans in danger to the virus. He minimized the virus to that end. He opposed mask-wearing. He promoted opening states too early. For quite a while early on, he praised China’s handling of the novel coronavirus. He opposed expanding testing. The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines were created prior to Operation Warp Speed. A plurality of the money from Operation Warp Speed to individual vaccine attempts went to unsuccessful attempts. He got vaccinated secretly. He promoted hydroxychloroquine, and sticking a UV light up your ass, and mainlining disinfectant to treat the novel coronavirus. Donald Trump politicized the novel coronavirus and the response to it. Joe Biden recognized our vulnerability to the novel coronavirus and noted that Donald Trump had not prepared the country for it. Frankly, I am still stunned that more people voted for Donald Trump in 2020 than in his original election . If you believed in a balanced budget, he didn’t do that. If you believe in law and order, he created more crime and more protests and more chaos. If you believe in job creation, then he is the first president since Herbert Hoover to have fewer Americans employed at the end of his term than at the beginning. If you think that is the result of the pandemic, the problem is that it is a result of his mismanagement of the pandemic. If you believe in a strong national defense, he weakened us by alienating long-standing traditional allies and by his isolationism. If you believe in character and integrity, you saw that he had none.
The vast majority of Democrats and independents are fully vaccinated. The vast majority of those who are unvaccinated are white republicans. Republican media and politicians besides the former guy minimized the novel coronavirus and promoted opposing getting vaccinated.
There are two primary points from the following sources. First, damning quotations prove he minimized it when he knew it was dangerous and deadly. He lied about how deadly and dangerous it is. If you believe what he said, if you believe that the novel coronavirus was an over-blown hoax promoted by democrats and the media just to defeat the president you love, why would you get vaccinated ? Second, the timelines demonstrate he botched the response to the pandemic overall making many decisions designed (in his mind) to boost the economy and thus, boost his re-election chances which resulted in many more hospitalizations and deaths due to the pandemic than necessary.
There is a timeline from Vox by Cameron Peters
But the coronavirus’s threat was of concern to US national security officials, who, as the Washington Post reported in March, were warning Trump of the global danger posed by the virus in daily intelligence briefings as early as January.
Nonetheless, in public comments and tweets, the president consistently played down the fledgling pandemic even as the first US case was reported in Washington state. He also applauded China’s handling of the virus at several points in January, before taking action to protect the US in the form of a limited travel ban from China on January 31.
He repeatedly praised Xi’s transparency and handling of the novel coronavirus for several months in 2020. This is only one example . He was motivated by his desire for a trade deal with China.
January 24: Trump praises China’s “efforts and transparency” and thanks Chinese President Xi Jinping for his response to the virus.
He repeatedly downplayed the virus and called it a hoax created by the Democratic Party for political advantage.
February 27: Trump predicts that the coronavirus will disappear “like a miracle.”
It’s going to disappear. One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.
February 28: Trump refers to the coronavirus as the Democrats’ “new hoax” at a rally in South Carolina.
The Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus… One of my people came up to me and said “Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia, that didn’t work out too well. They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax that was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything, they tried it over and over, they’ve been doing it since you got in… And this is their new hoax.”
Trump tied his re-election campaign to the economy. When the best response to fighting the pandemic to limit the loss of life and health would temporarily harm the economy, he would oppose it. This is like the shut-downs which first started in California and was followed by 30 other states repeating this example. If he heard of a simple solution to the pandemic, he latched onto it regardless of how little support in science it had.
By the end of the month, more than 30 states had done the same, and those shutdowns — a public health necessity, in the opinion of most experts — brought the US economy to a screeching halt. As a result, it’s maybe not surprising that Trump, who has previously tied his reelection pitch directly to the economy, spent much of the month broadcasting an unwarranted optimism about the trajectory of the virus and promoting potential treatments like hydroxychloroquine — which the FDA has since warned against using for Covid-19 treatment or prevention, noting it can cause heart problems.
As it became apparent that it was growing more serious, he sought to cast blame elsewhere. His bigotry led him to blaming China. However, he was warned early on by experts and he is responsible for what he does with that information and how he responds once it is here. At that point, the source is irrelevant. We didn’t call the 1918 pandemic, the Nebraska Pig Farmer Pandemic. Then he says, “We cannot let the cure be worse than the disease” to opposing closing the economy because he had tied his re-election chances to the economy.
WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 23, 2020
March 19: Trump labels the coronavirus the “Chinese Virus” in a press conference; photos show that he revised prepared remarks to add the xenophobic term
In April Trump claims complete and total authority, saying that’s the way it has to be. In such a case, there is no way to avoid responsibility for managing the response to the pandemic.
April 13: Trump claims to have the legal right to overrule governors’ shelter-in-place orders, asserting at a press conference that the president’s “authority is total.”TRUMP: "When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total. And that's the way it's gotta be. It's total."
Here he politicizes the pandemic again and incites more violence, a preview of when he would incite the insurrection.
April 17: As small groups of — sometimes armed — protesters demonstrating against shelter-in-place orders begin to receive media coverage, Trump calls on his supporters, including those who attended these protests, to “liberate” Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia, all of which have Democratic governors.
LIBERATE MICHIGAN!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 17, 2020
Things continued to worsen. Trump continued to live in denial.
May 2020
If April was focused on shifting the blame, May was the month the president pivoted to denying there was anything to be blamed for. Although the US death toll passed 100,000 on May 27, Trump nonetheless insisted that the US response had “met the moment.” The US began to lead the world in Covid-19 cases and deaths.
There is a timeline from my representative, Representative Lloyd Doggett
Here are some of the most important events in the timeline. He began badly. By disbanding the pandemic response team, he put us behind at the very beginning. He had years to build up needed supplies. He praises China because of a deal he wants with China.
May 2018
|
The Trump Administration disbands the White House pandemic response team.
|
July 2019
|
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) epidemiologist embedded in China’s disease control agency left the post, and the Trump Administration eliminated the role.
|
Oct. 2019
|
“Currently, there are insufficient funding sources designated for the federal government to use in response to a severe influenza pandemic.” [Source: The results of a Department of Health and Human Services 2019 influenza pandemic simulation]
|
Jan. 22, 2020
|
“We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.”
|
Jan. 24, 2020
|
Trump praises China’s handling of the coronavirus: “China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”
|
Jan. 28, 2020
|
“This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency...This is going to be the roughest thing you face" Trump’s National Security Advisor to Trump
|
Trump admits that the pandemic is deadly in private to Woodward, but publicly minimizes it.
Feb. 7, 2020
|
“It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flu... This is deadly stuff” [Trump in a private interview with Bob Woodward from The Washington Post made public on Sept. 9, 2020]
|
Feb. 10, 2020
|
“I think the virus is going to be—it’s going to be fine.”
|
Feb. 10, 2020
|
“Looks like by April, you know in theory when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”
|
Feb. 24, 2020
|
“The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA… the Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
|
Feb. 25, 2020
|
“CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.”
|
Feb. 25, 2020
|
“I think that's a problem that’s going to go away… They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine.”
|
The famous statement that “it will disappear”.
Feb. 26, 2020
|
"This is a flu. This is like a flu."
|
Feb. 27, 2020
|
“It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
|
He always says something great he is doing is imminent, but it never is.
March 2, 2020
|
“A lot of things are happening, a lot of very exciting things are happening and they’re happening very rapidly.”
|
March 4, 2020
|
“Now, and this is just my hunch, and — but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this. Because a lot people will have this and it's very mild.”
|
Here we have the famous admission by Trump to Woodward that he wanted to “always play it down”. He shows no compassion or empathy when asked for a kind word for scared Americans. He prioritizes the economy over managing the pandemic because he believes a good economy will lead to re-election. The problem is that until he manages the pandemic successfully and well, he won’t get a good economy.
March 19, 2020
|
I intended "to always play it down.” [Trump in a private taped interview with Bob Woodward, made public on September 9]
|
March 20, 2020
|
“I say that you're a terrible reporter, that's what I say. I think it's a very nasty question, and I think it's a very bad signal that you're putting out to the American people." [Response to reporter’s question: "What do you say to Americans who are watching you right now who are scared?"]
|
March 22, 2020
|
“WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF.”
|
March 24, 2020
|
“I'm also hopeful to have Americans working again by that Easter - that beautiful Easter day.”
|
March 24, 2020
|
“We’ve never closed down the country for the flu,” Trump said. “So you say to yourself, what is this all about?”
|
He claims to have all authority because he is president. He envisions himself as dictator. This complements what we see after he loses the election and he promotes the big lie, incites the insurrection, and encourages republicans in Congress to commit sedition by voting to object to state certified electoral college votes from a free and fair election devoid of widespread voter fraud.
April 13, 2020
|
“But I guess I'm doing OK, because, to the best of my knowledge, I'm the President of the United States, despite the things that are said."
|
April 14, 2020
|
“Enough!” [When a reporter questioned his claim that his authority as president is “total”]
|
April 14, 2020
|
“[w]hen somebody’s the president of the United States, the authority is total.”
|
Here is the weird stick a UV light up your ass to treat the novel coronavirus or mainline disinfectant in order to treat the novel coronavirus.
April 23, 2020
|
"I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? As you see, it gets in the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that."
|
April 23, 2020
|
“So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether its ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said, that hasn't been checked but you're gonna test it. And then I said, supposing it brought the light inside the body, which you can either do either through the skin or some other way…”
|
April 23, 2020
|
“You see states are starting to open up now, and it’s very exciting to see,”
|
April 23, 2020
|
Over 26 million jobless claims have been filed
|
April 29, 2020
|
“It’s gonna go away, this is going to go away.”
|
He constantly says it is going away when it is not. This leads those who believe him and support him to believe that the virus is going away and that they don’t have to worry about it or change their lives in any way. He opposes testing even though without testing we don’t know where the pandemic is, where the hotspots are, where it is going. He opposes it because he thinks ignorance will help him win re-election even though it will result in more deaths from the pandemic.
June 15, 2020
|
“At some point this stuff goes away and it’s going away.”
|
June 17, 2020
|
“It’s fading away. It’s going to fade away.”
|
June 18, 2020
|
“And it is dying out. The numbers are starting to get very good.”
|
June 20, 2020
|
"Testing is a double-edged sword,...When you do testing to that extent, you're going to find more people, you're going to find more cases, so I said to my people, 'Slow the testing down, please.'"
|
We get the second highest death rate per capita. He is jealous of the poll numbers of Dr. Fauci.
June 30, 2020
|
The U.S. has just 4% of the global population, but 25% of global coronavirus cases and the second-highest death rate per capita.
|
July 28, 2020
|
"He's got this high approval rating. So why don't I have a high approval rating with respect -- and the administration -- with respect to the virus?" (Trump referring to Anthony Fauci)
|
Aug. 1, 2020
|
“Wrong! We have more cases because we have tested far more than any other country, 60,000,000. If we tested less, there would be less cases,” (Donald Trump in a retweet of Anthony Fauci saying the U.S. has seen more cases than European countries because it only shut down a fraction of its economy amid the pandemic)
|
Aug. 3, 2020
|
“You know, there are those that say you can test too much, you do know that.”
|
Aug. 31, 2020
|
"We've done a great job in Covid but we don't get the credit."
|
Aug. 31, 2020
|
Over Six million Americans have tested positive for the coronavirus.
|
Sept. 4, 2020
|
There will be a vaccine “before the end of the year and maybe even before Nov. 1. I think we can probably have it sometime in October.”
|
Sept. 9, 2020
|
U.S. death toll passes 190,000
|
Sept. 10, 2020
|
“I really do believe that we are rounding the corner. The vaccines are right there”
|
Sept. 10, 2020
|
“This is nobody's fault but China.”
|
Sept. 10, 2020
|
“We've possibly done the best job”
|
Sept. 10, 2020
|
“We have rounded the final turn”
|
He has passed the blame to China, but once the pandemic hit our country, he is responsible for what happens in the United States.
Sept. 14, 2020
|
Trump was asked if he is afraid of Coronavirus risk at his rallies: “I’m on a stage, it’s very far away, so I’m not at all concerned.”
|
Sept. 16, 2020
|
“If you take the blue states out, we’re at a level I don’t think anybody in the world would be at.”
|
Trump endorses Joe Biden for president saying, “He’ll listen to the scientists”
Oct. 18, 2020
|
"He'll listen to the scientists... If I listened totally to the scientists, we would right now have a country that would be in a massive depression instead — we’re like a rocket ship. Take a look at the numbers." [Trump referring to Biden]
|
He wants the media to ignore the pandemic even though huge numbers of people are dying. He wants that because he believes that mentioning the pandemic will harm his re-election chances.
Oct. 19, 2020
|
"People are saying whatever. Just leave us alone. They’re tired of it. People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots...Fauci is a nice guy. He’s been here for 500 years."
|
Oct. 19, 2020
|
"They are getting tired of the pandemic, aren't they? You turn on CNN, that's all they cover. 'Covid, Covid, Pandemic, Covid, Covid.' You know why? They're trying to talk everybody out of voting. People aren't buying it, CNN, you dumb bastards."
|
He is now really losing what little there is in his mind. He again minimizes the novel coronavirus because the election is only a week away.
Oct. 24, 2020
|
“Turn on television: ‘covid, covid, covid, covid, covid.’ A plane goes down, 500 people dead, they don’t talk about it — ‘covid, covid, covid, covid,’ “By the way, on November 4th, you won’t hear about it anymore.”
|
Oct. 26, 2020
|
"Cases up because we TEST, TEST, TEST. A Fake News Media Conspiracy. Many young people who heal very fast. 99.9%. Corrupt Media conspiracy at all time high. On November 4th., the topic will totally change. VOTE!"
|
Oct. 26, 2020
|
"We have made tremendous progress with the China Virus, but the Fake News refuses to talk about it this close to the Election. COVID, COVID, COVID is being used by them, in total coordination, in order to change our great early election numbers. Should be an election law violation!"
|
Oct. 27, 2020
|
"So they brought it down now, immunity, from life to four months. And you know now with them, you can’t watch anything else. You turn on… COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID. Well, we have a spike in cases. You ever notice, they don’t use the word death. They use the word cases, cases. Like, “Barron Trump is a case.” He has sniffles. He was sniffling. One Kleenex, that’s all he needed. One, and he was better. But he’s a case"
|
Oct. 30, 2020
|
Nine million Americans have now been infected by the coronavirus.
|
Oct. 30, 2020
|
“Our doctors get more money if someone dies from Covid,” and so “when in doubt choose Covid.”
|
Nov. 1, 2020
|
U.S. death toll passes 230,000
|
Nov. 1, 2020
|
“Biden wants to LOCKDOWN our Country, maybe for years. Crazy! There will be NO LOCKDOWNS. The great American Comeback is underway!!!”
|
Nov. 2, 2020
|
“Joe Biden is promising to delay the vaccine and turn America into a prison state—locking you in your home while letting far-left rioters roam free. The Biden Lockdown will mean no school, no graduations, no weddings, no Thanksgiving, no Christmas, no Fourth of July”
|
He attributes all manner of powers to Joe Biden and says he will turn America into a prison state. His bigotry doesn’t allow him to understand protests for racial and social justice.
Dec. 25, 2020
|
U.S. death toll passes 330,000
|
Dec. 30, 2020
|
As recently as mid-December, the Trump administration touted an ambitious goal: 20 million COVID-19 vaccinations by the year’s end. A CDC tracker shows only about 2 million people have been vaccinated so far.
|
Dec. 31, 2020
|
U.S. death toll passes 340,000
|
He was at 10% of his stated goal. He never promoted getting the vaccine. When he got vaccinated, he did so secretly. The summary of the pandemic’s results under Trump’s presidency is a very bleak one. We lose 3,000 Americans a day.
January 20
|
Each day in January, covid-19 killed an average of 3,100 people in the United States — one every 28 seconds.
|
January 20, 2021
|
Trump's term in office saw over 25 million confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States, over 400,000 of which resulted in death.
President-elect Joseph R. Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris are sworn into office.
|
There is another timeline and incisive commentary and information all put together like you won’t find in any other source by William Saletan. I cannot do justice to how incredible this article is. It’s the best piece of writing summarizing Trump’s response to the pandemic that I have ever found. I recommend reading it in the strongest possible terms. It is engaging, extremely well-written, and easy to read. It is incredibly hard to pick which parts of the article to quote from.
Here is the summary of the article by the author:
This isn’t speculation. All the evidence is in the public record. But the truth, unlike Trump’s false narrative, is scattered in different places. It’s in emails, leaks, interviews, hearings, scientific reports, and the president’s stray remarks. This article puts those fragments together. It documents Trump’s interference or negligence in every stage of the government’s failure: preparation, mobilization, public communication, testing, mitigation, and reopening.
Trump picked up the idea that the virus would go away in the Summer from Xi, not from a scientist.
The phone call, the talking points Trump picked up from it, and his subsequent attempts to cover up his alliance with Xi are part of a deep betrayal. The story the president now tells—that he “built the greatest economy in history,” that China blindsided him by unleashing the virus, and that Trump saved millions of lives by mobilizing America to defeat it—is a lie. Trump collaborated with Xi, concealed the threat, impeded the U.S. government’s response, silenced those who sought to warn the public, and pushed states to take risks that escalated the tragedy. He’s personally responsible for tens of thousands of deaths.
Saletan notes and documents that Trump was warned against this theory that it would go away in the Summer. He points out that Trump had plenty of time to fill the depleted stockpile and was warned of the danger of a pandemic. Here is one of the themes of the article by Saletan, a theme that is a key to understanding Trump’s actions during the pandemic. Every decision he made was based upon tying his re-election chances to the economy and not understanding that if he didn’t do everything early on to contain the pandemic and minimize the number of deaths and hospitalizations, then the economy would be hurt worse.
Trump prepared for a war, not for a virus. He wagered that if a pandemic broke out, he could pull together the resources to contain it quickly. He was wrong. But that was just the first of many mistakes. Saletan states that Trump spoke well of China because he wanted a trade deal with China. Again we return to the theme that Trump believed that his re-election chances were tied to the economy and failing to understand that if he didn’t get the pandemic under control early on even if it meant some harm to the economy , then the pandemic would make the economy much worse. Trump also repeatedly opposed expanding testing because he thought that the numbers would make him look bad and harm his re-election chances.
The crisis in China grew. In late January, Trump’s medical advisers agreed with his national security team that he should suspend travel from China to the United States. But Trump resisted. He had spent months cultivating a relationship with Xi and securing the trade deal. He was counting on China to buy American goods and boost the U.S. economy, thereby helping him win reelection. He had said this to Xi explicitly, in a conversation witnessed by then–National Security Adviser John Bolton. Trump also worried that a travel ban would scare the stock market. But by the end of the month, airlines were halting flights to China anyway. On Jan. 31, Trump gave in.
Fauci saw this as a grave vulnerability. From Feb. 14 to March 11, he warned in a dozen hearings, forums, and interviews that the virus might be spreading “under the radar.” But Trump wasn’t interested. He liked having a low infection count—he bragged about it at rallies—and he understood that the official count would stay low if people weren’t tested. Trump had been briefed on the testing situation since late January and knew test production was delayed. But he insisted that “anybody that wants a test can get a test” and that “the tests are all perfect.” Later, he brushed off the delay in test production and said it had been “quickly remedied.” He complained that additional tests, by exposing additional cases, made him “look bad.”
To keep the numbers low, Trump was willing to risk lives.
The CDC would later acknowledge that due to woefully insufficient testing, the overwhelming majority of infections had gone undiagnosed. Models would show that by mid-February, there were hundreds of undetected infections in the United States for every known case. By the end of the month, there were thousands.
Once again, Trump opposes measures which would help contain the pandemic and limit the deaths and harm done by the economy by pushing opening states. He also claimed that doctors were falsely attributing deaths to the virus intentionally.