...
From the article,
The 69-page document, finished in 2016, provided a step by step list of priorities - which were then ignored by the administration.
Source: Politico on Mar 25, 2020.
...
How hard could it be, right? Seriously though, in his defense, he has done some great public health work on AIDS.
However, it's hard not to wonder if someone with experience in government could have done better. For example, the 5 previous CDC directors all had experience in government.
Source: The New York Times on Mar 21, 2020.
...
Trump removed Timothy Ziemer from the National Security Council. Ziemer was the Senior Director for Global Health Security and Biothreats. His responsibilities included preparedness against infectious diseases, including leading the response in case of a pandemic. He was never replaced.
Source: Washington Post on May 10, 2018.
...
The post was held by Dr. Linda Quick. Her job was to train Chinese epidemiologists to help track, investigate, and contain diseases.
From the article,
“It was heartbreaking to watch,” said Bao-Ping Zhu, a Chinese American who served in that role, which was funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between 2007 and 2011. “If someone had been there, public health officials and governments across the world could have moved much faster.”
Why it matters: If it's true that China knew earlier than anyone else, having CDC experts on the ground in China could have helped us realize the severity of the outbreak sooner.
Source: Reuters on Mar 22, 2020.
...
The project, launched by the U.S. Agency for International Development in 2009, identified 1,200 different viruses that had the potential to erupt into pandemics, including more than 160 novel coronaviruses. The initiative, called PREDICT, also trained and supported staff in 60 foreign laboratories — including the Wuhan lab that identified SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
Source: Los Angeles Times on Apr 2, 2020.
...
U.S. intelligence agencies were issuing 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.
Source: The Washington Post on Mar 20, 2020.
...
CDC director Redfield received a call from the where the China CDC director burst out crying because of how bad things were getting in Wuhan. Shortly after, he notified the HHS Secretary, Alex Azar, about the serverity of the outbreak.
Source: The New York Times on Mar 28, 2020.
...
This is the second serious warning the WHO sent out, and the first time the WHO was sure it was a new coronavirus.
Source: WHO on Jan 12, 2020.
...
Starting at this point, countries could start creating tests for the virus.
Source: WHO on Jan 12, 2020.
...
Despite earlier efforts, this is the first time he was able to speak with Trump.
From the article,
When he reached Trump by phone, the president interjected to ask about vaping and when flavored vaping products would be back on the market, the senior administration officials said.
Source: The Washington Post on Apr 7, 2020.
Trump's first comments on Coronavirus: 'we have it totally under control. ... It’s going to be just fine.'
...
President Trump made his first public comments about the coronavirus in a TV interview from Davos with CNBC’s Joe Kernen. The first American case had been announced the day before, and Kernen asked Trump, “Are there worries about a pandemic at this point?”
Trump said, “No. Not at all. And we have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”
Source: The Washington Post on Apr 7, 2020.
...
From the article:
Bowen’s medical supply company, Prestige Ameritech, could ramp up production to make an additional 1.7 million N95 masks a week.
“I don’t believe we as an government are anywhere near answering those questions for you yet,” Laura Wolf, director of the agency’s Division of Critical Infrastructure Protection, responded that same day.
Source: The Washington Post on May 9, 2020.
...
Trump economic advisor Peter Navarro circulated in the White House warning that there would be a dire human and economic costs. He specifically warns that an outbreak in the US could cost the economy up to $5.7 Trillion and as many as 543,000 people could die.
It is unclear whether the president ever read this memo, though he was notified of it.
Source: Axios on Apr 7, 2020.
...
HHS Secretary Alex Azar once again tries to warn the president that this could get really bad. The president responded that Azar was being alarmist.
Source: The New York Times on Apr 11, 2020.
...
That's the whole quote. I haven't dug into the original source yet.
Source: The Washington Post on Apr 7, 2020.
...
In his defense, since the virus was going to go away on its own, there's not much he could do anyway.
Source: The Washington Post on Apr 20, 2020.
...
The travel ban prevents travel to the US if you've been to mainland China in the past 14 days. However, the ban does not apply to US citizens and their families. As a result, 40,000 people have traveled from China to the US from when the ban began until April 4th.
For those 40,000 there was little to no actual preventive measures. As far as I can tell, nobody was tested for covid and nobody was required to quarantine. Occasionally your temperature would be taken at an airport, and usually you would be asked to stay home for 14 days.
From the New York Times article:
Re-entry to the US during this time is very lax. A traveler from Beijing going to Seattle was asked if he had a temperature and whether he had been to Wuhan. They gave him a card requesting he stay home for two weeks. Nobody ever followed up.
Source: The New York Times on Apr 4, 2020.
...
After playing golf, he sat for a classic Hannity softball where he added, “Well, we pretty much shut it down coming in from China,”
Source: The Washington Post on Apr 20, 2020.
...
Although we did not know it at the time, we would later learn that the CDC tests suffered from a technical flaw and didn't produce reliable results.
Source: CDC on Feb 6, 2020.
...
Although we didn't know it at the time, on Feb 6th, the first person died in the US of coronavirus. The person died in their home. It wasn't until April that we confirmed coronavirus was to blame.
From the article,
The county’s medical examiner-coroner said that autopsies of two people who died at their homes on Feb. 6 and Feb. 17 showed that the individuals were infected with the virus.
Why it matters: if we had spun up testing sooner or started doing better tracking of Americans returning from China, we could have known this was happening so much sooner.
Source: The New York Times on Apr 22, 2020.
...
The Trump budget this year included a 16 percent cut to the CDC. It appears his budget tries to cut the CDC budget basically every year. That he would still attempt to do so during the early signs of a pandemic is insane.
Source: The Washington Post on Feb 10, 2020.
...
That's the whole quote. I haven't dug into the original source yet.
Source: The Washington Post on Apr 7, 2020.
...
His quote was:
"You know in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather. And that's a beautiful date to look forward to."
Why it matters: this is yet another example of Trump saying we don't have to worry about it because it will go away on its own.
Source: The Washington Post on Apr 20, 2020.
...
One week after first shipping the tests to labs in the US and around the world, the CDC confirmed its test doesn't work. Our ability to understand how the virus is spreading in the US is severely limited.
Source: The New York Times on Feb 12, 2020.
...
The full quote is “I think it’s going to work out fine. 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. So let’s see what happens, but I think it’s going to work out fine.”
Source: The Washington Post on Apr 7, 2020.
...
Trump economic advisor Peter Navarro circulated a second memo, this time to officials throughout the NSC.
Specifically it warned:
- 1-2 million people could die
- 100 million people could catch the virus
- We would need over a billion face masks, 200,000 Tyvek suits, 11,000 ventilator circuits, 25,000 powered air-purifying respirators (PAPR's).
It then asked for $3 Billion to support efforts at prevention, treatment, inoculation and diagnostics.
Source: Axios on Apr 7, 2020.
Trump says coronavirus 'very much under control', stock market is 'starting to look very good to me.'
...
A day after Navarro warned 1-2 million people in the US could die, Trump tweeted his regular dose of nonsense.
Source: Axios on Apr 7, 2020.
...
On Feb. 25, Nancy Messonnier, a senior CDC official, sounded perhaps the most significant public alarm to that point, when she told reporters that the coronavirus was likely to spread within communities in the United States and that disruptions to daily life could be “severe.” Trump called Azar on his way back from a trip to India and complained that Messonnier was scaring the stock markets, according to two senior administration officials.
Source: The Washington Post on Mar 20, 2020.
Dr. Helen Chu defies government order to test for the coronavirus and discovers it's already in the US
...
Dr. Chu and her colleagues had been gathering nasal swabs from people in the Seattle area experiencing flu symptoms. She sought permission from the government and was rejected multiple times.
Finally, they started testing anyway and soon discovered a teen with no recent travel history who had coronavirus.
If the federal government had granted her earlier permission, we could have known much sooner about community spread in the US.
Source: The New York Times on Mar 10, 2020.
...
Trump says, "When you have 15 people — and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero — that’s a pretty good job we’ve done."
Source: The Washington Post on Apr 7, 2020.
...
Trump said: "It's going to disappear. One day -- it's like a miracle -- it will disappear. And from our shores, we -- you know, it could get worse before it gets better. It could maybe go away. We'll see what happens. Nobody really knows. The fact is, the greatest experts -- I've spoken to them all. Nobody really knows."
Source: The New York Times on Mar 15, 2020.
Trump holds rally in South Carolina, says "Democrats are politicizing the Coronavirus", "this is their new hoax".
...
A lot of Trumpkins are debating this quote now, but he clearly says the coronavirus is "their new hoax" in the same way that impeachment was a hoax.
The full Trump quote is this:
"Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. You know that coronavirus? They're politicizing it.
We did one of the great jobs. You say, "How's president Trump doing?" They go, "oh not good not good."
They have no truth they don't have any clue they can't even count their votes in Iowa they can't even they can't count their votes.
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 it's all turning they lost it's all turning think of it think of it and this is their new hoax.
But you know we did something that's been pretty amazing we're 15 people in this massive country and because of the fact that we went early we went early we could have had a lot more than that."
Source: Global News on YouTube on Feb 28, 2020.
...
Also at the South Carolina rally, Trump said "The Democrat policy of open borders is a direct threat to the health and well-being of all Americans. Now you see it with the coronavirus, you see it. You see it with the coronavirus."
Source: The New York Times on Mar 15, 2020.
...
Three weeks after releasing flawed CDC tests, the US has still not requested the WHO tests. The bottleneck is clearly not the WHO because at this point the WHO has sent tests to 60 countries.
Source: Politico on Mar 6, 2020.
Trump says if you're healthy and infected, 'you will probably go through a process and you’ll be fine.'
...
His full quote is:
“Additional cases in the United States are likely, but healthy individuals should be able to fully recover. And we think that will be a statement that we can make with great surety now that we’ve gotten familiar with this problem. They should be able to recover should they contract the virus. So, healthy people, if you’re healthy, you will probably go through a process and you’ll be fine.”
Source: The Washington Post on Apr 20, 2020.
...
“But the same vaccine could not work?” he said. “You take a solid flu vaccine — you don’t think that would have an impact or much of an impact on corona?”
Source: The Washington Post on Mar 3, 2020.
...
His exact quote is, “We don’t have enough tests today to meet what we anticipate will be the demand going forward.”
Source: Minnesota Star Tribune on Mar 5, 2020.
...
This was, of course, not true. At this time only ~10,000 tests had been run in the entire US.
Source: The New York Times on Mar 6, 2020.
...
His full quote is this:
“They would like to have the people come off,” he said. “I would like to have the people stay. I told them to make the final decision. I would rather — because I like the numbers being where they are. I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault. And it wasn’t the fault of the people on the ship either. OK? It wasn’t their fault, either. And they are mostly Americans.”
Why it matters: Trump is saying the health of humans is less important than how good he thinks he looks. He would rather have 3,533 passengers, mostly Americans, suffer and get infected at sea than have his case count increase. 103 passengers eventually tested positive and at least 3 died.
Source: The New York Times on Mar 6, 2020.
...
On March 7th and 8th, Trump played golf. During that time cases in the US would nearly double, from 233 to 433, and deaths would increase from 12 to 17.
Source: Slate on Mar 9, 2020.
...
The director of the WHO declared that they consider covid-19 to be a pandemic.
Source: World Health Organization on Mar 11, 2020.
...
He terrified Americans traveling in Europe and tanked the markets by falsely stating that all goods and people would be banned starting on March 13th at midnight.
The first problematic quote was this:
To keep new cases from entering our shores, we will be suspending all travel from Europe to the United States for the next 30 days.
In reality, Americans were still allowed to return to the US. Claiming that "all travel" was being suspended caused Americans abroad to start panic buying expensive flights home because they were afraid they would get stuck in Europe.
The second problematic quote was this:
"[...] these prohibitions will not only apply to the tremendous amount of trade and cargo but various other things as we get approval. Anything coming from Europe to the United States is what we are discussing."
In reality, the prohibitions did not apply to cargo.
Source: NPR on Mar 11, 2020.
...
From the attached article, "Kushner was initially tapped to join the coronavirus response by Trump on March 12, when he moved quickly to address the testing shortfalls and pulled in allies with a track record of launching health care companies."
Source: Politico on Apr 1, 2020.
...
Here is the full question:
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 that every single American who needs a test will be able to have a test what's the date of that?
And his response was:
Yeah no I don't take responsibility at all because we were given a a set of circumstances and we were given rules regulations and specifications from a different time. [... long meandering nonsense]
It will not surprise you to learn that there was no mythical Obama regulations that slowed anyone down.
Source: The New York Times on Mar 13, 2020.
...
Tacitly admitting that there were testing problems, which is a small victory for reality, Trump then tried to shift the blame to his favorite scapegoat, Obama.
His full tweet was:
For decades the @CDCgov looked at, and studied, its testing system, but did nothing about it. It would always be inadequate and slow for a large scale pandemic, but a pandemic would never happen, they hoped. President Obama made changes that only complicated things further..... .... Their response to H1N1 Swine Flu was a full scale disaster, with thousands dying, and nothing meaningful done to fix the testing problem, until now. The changes have been made and testing will soon happen on a very large scale basis. All Red Tape has been cut, ready to go!
It's true that the CDC under Obama did propose increased oversight of medical testing, but it was just a proposal that was never implemented.
Even if Trump had inherited a CDC that was not prepared, he is in charge of it and can thus direct it to change as he sees fit. The problem is that he didn't move more quickly.
Source: The Washington Post on Mar 31, 2020.
...
“Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves,” he said, adding “We will be backing you, but try getting it yourselves. Point of sales, much better, much more direct if you can get it yourself.”
This is bad because it forces states to bid against one another on ventilators rather than creating a system where there is a single buyer. This is also bad because it does not inspire any confidence that there is a national plan for actually getting states the equipment they need.
Source: The New York Times on Mar 16, 2020.
...
The White House renewed its nomination of Brett Giroir to the WHO Executive Board, which has been without a US representative since Trump took office. Of the 34 member states on the Executive Board, the US seat is the only empty one.
Why it matters: Despite complaining of the WHO shortcomings, Trump has not done even the bare minimum to better utilize the WHO as a resource.
Source: Vice on Apr 20, 2020.
...
As usual, the full quote is extremely dense Trump gibberish, so it's hard to know exactly what he's saying. However, there is no other plausible interpretation of "They have to treat us well also" in this context except that it will be worse for states if they don't.
The Trump quote is this:
No, I think we’re doing very well. But, you know, it’s a two-way street. They have to treat us well also. They can’t say, “Oh gee, we should get this, we should get that.” We’re doing a great job, like in New York, where we’re building, as I said, four hospitals, four medic — we’re literally building hospitals and medical centers. And then I hear that, you know, there’s a problem with ventilators.
Source: Vox on Mar 25, 2020.
...
His exact quote was,
I would love to have the country opened up and just er raring to go by Easter.
As if trying to out-do himself, he added,
We lose thousands and thousands of people a year to the flu, but we don’t turn the country off. We lose much more than that to automobile accidents. We don’t call the automobile companies and say, ‘Stop making automobiles.’
Finally, he said,
We’re all working very hard to make that a reality. Easter is a very special day for a lot of reasons. What a great timeline that would be.
Unfortunately, no journalist asked him to enumerate any of the reasons that Easter is a "special day."
Source: The Washington Post on Mar 24, 2020.
...
He said "If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call."
Here is the full exchange:
[Pence] calls all the governors. I tell him — I mean, I’m a different type of person — I say, “Mike, don’t call the governor of Washington. You’re wasting your time with him. Don’t call the woman in Michigan.” All — it doesn’t make any difference what happens —
Q You don’t want him to call the governor of Washington?
THE PRESIDENT: No, no. You know what I say? If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call. He’s a different type of person.
Source: The New York Times on Mar 30, 2020.
...
Trump said it doesn't make sense that a hospital would suddenly need way more masks. Instead of learning why you need more masks to treat covid patients, he instead amplified a conspiracy theory that the hospitals have been stealing them.
The quote:
Something is going on, and you ought to look into it as reporters. Where are the masks going? Are they going out the back door? How do you go from 10,000 to 300,000? And we have that in a lot of different places.
Source: Vox on Mar 30, 2020.
...
His full tweet is this:
Because the “Ratings” of my News Conferences etc. are so high, “Bachelor finale, Monday Night Football type numbers” according to the @nytimes, the Lamestream Media is going CRAZY. “Trump is reaching too many people, we must stop him.” said one lunatic. See you at 5:00 P.M.!
Source: Twitter on Mar 29, 2020.
...
Trump has the power to open enrollment in Obamacare so that people without health insurance could get it more easily, including those who lost their coverage with their job. He chose not to. No explanation was given.
Source: The New York Times on Apr 1, 2020.
...
On April 2nd, Pence began blocking US health officials like Dr. Fauci from appearing on CNN. "When you guys cover the briefings with the health officials then you can expect them back on your air," a Pence spokesperson told CNN. CNN had only been showing the Trump Q&A portion because the whole thing was very long and full of, well, lies.
On April 8th, CNN showed the full briefing, including the part with Pence. On April 9th, health officials were once again allowed on CNN.
Source: CNN on Apr 9, 2020.
...
“If it does work, it would be a shame we did not do it early,” Mr. Trump said, noting the federal government had purchased and stockpiled 29 million pills of the drug. “We are sending them to various labs, our military, we’re sending them to the hospitals.”
“There are side effects to hydroxychloroquine,” Dr. Ranney, an emergency physician at Brown University. “It causes psychiatric symptoms, cardiac problems and a host of other bad side effects.”
Why it's bad: this is a pretty serious drug with serious side effects. It's unbelievably irresponsible to tell people to just take it and not worry about it.
Source: The New York Times on Apr 5, 2020.
...
Despite directing states and hospitals to get their own supplies however they can, the federal government has at the same time been seizing the medical supplies that states have ordered.
Multiple governors and hospitals in multiple states are reporting that FEMA has commandeered shipments of masks, ventilators, thermometers, and other medical equipment that had been ordered by various states and hospitals.
It is not at all clear how this equipment is then being routed to various states.
Source: The New York Times on Apr 6, 2020.
...
Trump removed Glenn Fine, the chairman of the federal panel Congress created to oversee his administration’s management of the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package.
To explain his move, Trump said, “We have a lot of IGs in from the Obama era,” he said Tuesday. “And as you know, it’s a presidential decision. And I left them, largely. I mean, changed some, but I left them. . . . But when we have, you know, reports of bias and when we have different things coming in. I don’t know Fine. I don’t think I ever met Fine.”
Source: The Washington Post on Apr 7, 2020.
...
"We’re going to put a hold on money spent to the W.H.O. We’re going to put a very powerful hold on it and we’re going to see," Trump said during the daily coronavirus briefing at the White House. He added, "They called it wrong. They call it wrong. They really, they missed the call."
The claim that "they missed the call" is obviously a lie. The WHO declared a “public health emergency of international concern” weeks before Mr. Trump declared a national emergency.
Source: The New York Times on Apr 7, 2020.
...
US has 20,608 deaths and 529,951 cases in total.
The economy, despite Trump's encouragement on March 24th, was not "raring to go" on this day.
Source: ECDC on Apr 12, 2020.
...
Trump has ordered the Treasury department to tell the IRS that his name should appear on the stimulus checks being sent out to Americans. Not only is this not normal, it may actually slow down delivery of the checks by a few days.
From the article,
The Treasury Department has ordered President Trump’s name be printed on stimulus checks the Internal Revenue Service is rushing to send to tens of millions of Americans, a process that could slow their delivery by a few days, senior IRS officials said.
Why it matters: Trump shows that his own vanity is more important than actually getting people the help they need.
Source: The Washington Post on Apr 14, 2020.
...
After weeks of telling states to fend for themselves, Trump has now decided that it is in the constitution for him to be the hero that opens states up again.
From the article:
“The president of the United States calls the shots,” he said at his evening news briefing. “They can’t do anything without the approval of the president of the United States.”
Asked what provisions of the Constitution gave him the power to override the states if they wanted to remain closed, he said, “Numerous provisions,” without naming any. “When somebody’s the president of the United States, the authority is total.”
Source: The New York Times on Apr 13, 2020.
...
In an effort to shift blame away from himself, Trump criticized the WHO and said he will halt funding.
“So much death has been caused by their mistakes,” Trump said, repeating the criticisms of his own administration.
Source: The New York Times on Apr 14, 2020.
...
Switching back again to his previous stance, Trump agrees once more that states are in charge of how they open.
To this end, he released a set of nonbinding guidelines that basically tell states to open things gradually based on how bad things are in each state.
Determined to say as little as possible, he said states could start reopening as soon as May 1st or earlier. Which is a verbose way of saying they can open "at some point".
Source: The New York Times on Apr 16, 2020.
...
After releasing formal guidelines that say states get to decide on their own when to open, Trump's next logical step was then to encourage protests of states doing exactly that. He doesn't want the blame for opening states early, nor does he want the blame for the economy if it's still on the rocks in November, so the best he can do is complain but not do anything.
He tweeted, "LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!", "LIBERATE MINNESOTA!", and "LIBERATE MICHIGAN!" while small protests took place in each of those states against stay at home orders. It will not surprise you to learn that those three states all have Democratic governors.
Source: The New York Times on Apr 17, 2020.
...
Trump surprised the West Point administration on April 17th by announcing that he would be giving the commencement speech this year in person. At that point the West Point staff wasn't sure if there would even be a graduation this year.
Commencement will take place on June 13th. The 1,000 seniors will have to return to New York from their homes on May 31st and quarantine for the 14 days before graduation. They will have to isolate in their rooms for those two weeks.
Why it matters: Trump has decided to drag a thousand soldiers and untold hundreds of staff members back to the epicenter of the outbreak so that he can feel like a big deal.
Source: The New York Times on Apr 24, 2020.
...
As usual, this is scary in part because a possible interpretation of "knowingly responsible" is that they did it on purpose, which is of course nonsense.
The full exchange is this:
Reporter: "do you think that there should be some consequences if in the end you know China was responsible for all of this"
Trump: "well if they were knowingly responsible, certainly. If they did if, it was a mistake, a mistake is a mistake, but if they were knowingly responsible yeah then there should be consequences."
Source: NPR on Apr 18, 2020.
...
Trump said he would suspend issuing new green cards for 60 days. Earlier he had threatened a more complete immigration ban.
His quote on this is:
“By pausing immigration, we will help put unemployed Americans first in line for jobs as America reopens. So important, It would be wrong and unjust for Americans laid off by the virus to be replaced with new immigrant labor flown in from abroad. We must first take care of the American worker.”
Why it matters: immigration has nothing to do with the coronavirus. And slowing down immigration won't help the economy recover any faster. Trump is still fishing for things he can do to make him seem like the economic failures are not his fault. Shifting blame to immigrants has always been part of his playbook.
Source: The New York Times on Apr 21, 2020.
...
In fact, the death rate was higher in patients treated with Hydroxychloroquine (HC) even though the rate of ventilation was the same. This is a pretty big hint that even among patients who have a very serious case of covid, taking HC makes things worse.
Why it matters: after weeks of pushing HC without any evidence, Trump will now never mention it again. But it's important that we remember this: if he hadn't pushed it so hard then fewer people would have died.
Source: New York Times on Apr 21, 2020.
...
From the article,
Dr. Rick Bright was abruptly dismissed this week as the director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, and removed as the deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response.
His quote brings the real fire:
“I believe this transfer was in response to my insistence that the government invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the Covid-19 pandemic into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit,” he said in his statement. “I am speaking out because to combat this deadly virus, science — not politics or cronyism — has to lead the way.”
Why it matters: especially with growing evidence that hydroxychloroquine doesn't work, he is one more example of how Trump would rather slow down vaccine development than have anyone question him.
Source: The New York Times on Apr 22, 2020.
...
His full quote is impressive even in Trump-adjusted terms:
“Supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light. And I think you said that hasn’t been checked, but we’re going to test it? And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, either through the skin or some other way.
And then I see the disinfectant where it 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? Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that.”
Why it matters: Trump just doesn't realize how dumb he is, does he?
Source: The New York Times on Apr 24, 2020.
...
Trump's full quote:
“I was asking a question sarcastically to reporters like you. Disinfectant for doing this, maybe on the hands, would work. I was asking… when they use disinfectant it goes away in less than a minute. I was asking a very sarcastic question to reporters in the room about disinfectants on the inside… that was done in a sarcastic way.”
Why it matters: Impressively, the lie is even dumber than the original nonsense. Clearly the hope here is that people hear the lie before the truth and can hold onto that sweet sweet particle of deniability.
Source: Fox News on Apr 24, 2020.
...
Trump tweeted, after Fox News dropped them as hosts:
"But I love Diamond & Silk, and so do millions of people!"
Some quotes from the duo include:
“Is this being deliberately spread? Look, I’m not being a conspiracy theorist, this is real, but I’m asking my own questions. What the hell is going on?"
"Is this a pandemic, or was it a plandemic? Inquiring minds want to know."
"So I said that to say this: In each of these places where these hospitals are being built, I want to know how many 5G towers are in those places."
Why it matters: Amplifying these people is also amplifying their nonsense.
Source: The Daily Beast on Apr 27, 2020.
...
He is instructing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to push the intelligence agencies to find a link between a Wuhan lab and the coronavirus. Until he gets the evidence he needs, he's just saying it might be true and hoping the facts catch up.
Trump's quote is:
“It’s a terrible thing that happened, whether they made a mistake or whether it started off as a mistake and then they made another one, or did somebody do something on purpose? [...] There are a lot of theories, but we have people looking at it very, very strongly. Scientific people, intelligence people, and others.”
From the article:
Senior Trump administration officials have pushed American spy agencies to hunt for evidence to support an unsubstantiated theory that a government laboratory in Wuhan, China, was the origin of the coronavirus outbreak, according to current and former American officials.
Why it matters: Having messed up the response, Trump is now searching as hard as he can for a scapegoat. Blaming China for literally manufacturing the virus is too juicy for Trump to resist.
Source: The New York Times on Apr 30, 2020.
...
Trump nominated a replacement for Health and Human Services inspector general Christi Grimm. Grimm published a report on April 3rd where she surveyed 323 hospitals and asked what their biggest challenges were responding to the pandemic. Among the hospitals' concerns were severe shortages of testing supplies and long waits for results.
Trump found out about the report on April 6th, when he had this exchange with a reporter:
Reporter: Despite the nearly 1.8 million tests that you say the United States has done, the Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services released a report today — a survey — of more than 300 hospitals across the country. And the number one complaint from those hospitals were severe shortages of testing supplies and a really long wait time.
THE PRESIDENT: It’s just wrong. Did I hear the word “inspector general”? Really? It’s wrong. And they’ll talk to you about it. It’s wrong.
Reporter: But this is your own government.
THE PRESIDENT: Uh, it’s — well, where did he come from — the inspector general? What’s his name?
Why it matters: Trump doesn't care about fixing the problems. He only cares about silencing the criticism.
Source: The New York Times on May 1, 2020.
...
Rick Bright, who was recently fired for his anti-hydroxychloroquine stance, is back, claiming he was pressured to award contracts to Trump cronies during his tenure at the HHS.
From the article:
Rick Bright, the ousted chief of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency, said he was pressured to steer millions of dollars to the clients of a well-connected consultant.
Why it matters: When we award contracts to connected companies instead of the best companies, it makes our response to this kind of crisis worse.
Source: The New York Times on May 5, 2020.
...
From the article:
President Trump has complained to advisers about the way coronavirus deaths are being calculated, suggesting the real numbers are actually lower — and a number of his senior aides share this view, according to sources with direct knowledge.
Why it matters: The only way not to look bad at this point, Trump thinks, is if the dead people... maybe aren't dead?
Source: Axios on May 6, 2020.
...
From the article:
White House and other administration officials rejected the recommendations over concerns that they were overly prescriptive, infringed on religious rights and risked further damaging an economy that Mr. Trump was banking on to recover quickly.
Why it matters: It's nice that Trump went through this long process of formally rejecting expert health advice just to remind us that he doesn't give a shit.
Source: The New York Times on May 7, 2020.
...
In the continued comedy of errors that is Trump failing to take this seriously until it affects him personally, one of the military personal in daily close contact with Trump has tested positive for coronavirus. From the article, "The infected staffer is one of Trump’s personal valets, the military staff members who sometimes serve meals and look after personal needs of the president."
In response he has increased testing from once per week to once per day.
Why it matters: Trump is not going to take this seriously until he gets it personally, so I guess that's one way this could end up being a good thing.
Source: The Washington Post on May 7, 2020.
...
“I thought we could wind it down sooner,” the president told reporters on Wednesday. “But I had no idea how popular the task force is until actually yesterday when I started talking about winding down. It is appreciated by the public.”
Source: The New York Times on May 7, 2020.
...
Since they were testing members of the white house weekly and someone still contracted the virus, the genius conclusion from this is that "testing isn't necessary."
Trump's full quote:
“And this is why testing isn’t necessary. We have the best testing in the world, but testing’s not necessarily the answer because they were testing them.”
Source: The Washington Post on May 8, 2020.
...
From the article:
On Thursday, Harvard University researchers published new estimates, showing that the United States needs to be conducting at least 900,000 tests daily by May 15.
Source: The Washington Post on May 8, 2020.
...
Because Trump doesn't understand that masks would also protect him, he has begun a policy requiring all visitors to the White House to wear masks and excluded himself.
Source: The New York Times on May 11, 2020.
...
Upon questioning, Trump clarified that we have only prevailed over the testing portion of the "the moment".
His full quote of course shows this is nonsense because he doesn't mention tests:
"In every generation through every challenge and hardship and danger, America has risen to the task. We have met the moment and we have prevailed. Americans do whatever it takes to find solutions, pioneer breakthroughs and harness the energies we need to achieve a total victory. Day after day we’re making tremendous strides with the dedication of our doctors and nurses, these are incredible people, these are brave people, these are warriors."
Source: The Washington Post on May 12, 2020.
...
From the article,
A Democratic congressional aide said Linick was looking into Pompeo’s “misuse of a political appointee at the Department to perform personal tasks for himself and Mrs. Pompeo.”
Source: The Washington Post on May 16, 2020.
...
He claims he has been since about around May 8th even though the drug has severe side effects.
As usual we are given the difficult task of choosing between two options:
- He is lying to us.
- He is really that dumb.
Source: The Washington Post on May 18, 2020.
...
Unable to actually help the country fight this pandemic, Trump tried instead to selling it as a success in testing effectiveness.
“I view it as a badge of honor,” Trump explained. “Really, it’s a badge of honor.”
He continued,
“When we have a lot of cases,” Trump continued, “I don’t look at that as a bad thing. I look at that as, in a certain respect, as being a good thing because it means our testing is much better.”
Source: Slate on May 20, 2020.
...
He lasted 75 days since he last played, a record for him.
Source: The New York Times on May 23, 2020.