At the daily news briefing, Trump played up the promise of a malaria drug to possibly treat the coronavirus. He was asked about its application to other similar diseases like severe acute respiratory syndrome, for which he said he thought the drug had been “fairly effective.”
But then Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading immunologist, stepped in to qualify things. Continue reading.
This week, President Donald Trump announced that he was invoking the Defense Production Act (DPA) to leverage domestic private industry to generate much-needed medical equipment and supplies that are essential to an effective national COVID-19 response. Unfortunately, he walked it back on Twitter fewer than 24 hours later. Trump is now emphasizing that states need to figure out how to find these supplies on their own. This is a mistake. The Trump administration needs to implement the DPA immediately to avoid the worst-case scenario of massive shortages of critical medical supplies across the country.
Below are six steps that President Trump should be taking now on the DPA:
If you think you’ve been hearing a different President Trump this week — more accepting of the reality of the coronavirus pandemic — don’t be fooled. The new Trump is the same as the old Trump. He can’t help it. He’s incapable of taking responsibility for his role in this crisis — and thus incapable of leading us out of it.
After weeks of denial and deflection, a seemingly chastened Trump on Monday conceded that the virus was, in fact, “not under control,” and was, indeed, “a very bad one.” What caused the switch in tone? Who knows? Perhaps it was the largest one-day point drop in the Dow Jones in history on Monday. Perhaps it was a study the White House received saying that 2.2 million Americans could die. Perhaps it was that Trump’s beloved Mar-a-Lago is getting a coronavirus-necessitated deep cleaning.
But the sudden shift can’t conceal the fact that Trump has shown himself to be wholly inept at dealing with the pandemic. It doesn’t change the fact that he puts himself first, always. It doesn’t alter the fact that, as he once told top aides, he thinks of “each presidential day as an episode in a television show in which he vanquishes rivals.” It doesn’t dissolve Trump’s compulsion to lie, even when truth would serve him best. It doesn’t diminish his incompetence, ignorance or propensity for administrative chaos. Continue reading.
Donald Trump has repeatedly lied and downplayed the seriousness of the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak, but took time during a press conference on Monday to give himself a glowing review regardless.
“I’d rate it a ten,” Trump said, responding to reporter questions about how he would rank his administration’s efforts so far. “I think we’ve done a great job.”
Trump then touted his early response to the crisis by restricting travel from China and praised the work of professionals in his administration, who he said, “have done a great job.” Continue reading.
President Trump on Monday urged Americans to avoid traveling and gathering in public spaces in an effort to blunt the spread of the coronavirus, saying the outbreak could last into July or August.
“If everyone makes this change, or these critical changes and sacrifices now, we will rally together as one nation and we will defeat the virus,” Trump said in the White House briefing room. “We’re going to have a big celebration all together.”
Trump announced the new guidelines during a press briefing Monday afternoon. Officials recommended that for the next 15 days Americans avoid gatherings of more than 10 people; avoid discretionary travel; avoid eating in bars, restaurants and food courts; and work or engage in schooling from home when possible. Continue reading.
He could have taken action. He didn’t.President Trump made his first public comments about the coronavirus on Jan. 22, in a television 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?”
The president responded: “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.”
By this point, the seriousness of the virus was becoming clearer. It had spread from China to four other countries. China was starting to take drastic measures and was on the verge of closing off the city of Wuhan. Continue reading.
Thousands of people are going to die, he knows he will be blamed and he can already see his campaign circling the toilet. Those realizations were all over Donald Trump’s face on Wednesday night as he addressed the nation from the Oval Office. His speech was monotonal, his face so frozen with failure and fear that he looked like the product of taxidermy. He knows he is staring into the maw of a beast he can’t control. It’s going to be impossible to tweet away all the deaths that are coming, and he is terrified.
The question that sprang to mind as I watched him epically fuck up the most important moment of his presidency was this: What’s going to happen when the numbers of coronavirus deaths begin to climb, and his numbers begin to tank? They will. He’s not going to be able to stop the pandemic from killing thousands of Americans, and this lawless maniac is capable of anything. With the NBA and Major League Baseball suspending their seasons, with “March Madness” canceled, with concerts and festivals and parades canceled, Broadway theaters closed, schools shuttered from coast to coast, and the fact that we have no idea how long the coronavirus epidemic will last, Donald Trump is fully capable of making plans to cancel the election in November to save himself.
Trump tried to keep the whole thing secret at first, ordering the Department of Health and Human Services to hold its meetings about the coronavirus in secret — in a goddamned SCIF, for crying out loud! Because those initial meetings were top secret, important experts on epidemiology who lacked security clearances were banned from attending. Testing for the virus was held up by the CDC, which repeatedly refused to release hospitals and independent research facilities from regulations that prevented them from developing and fielding their own test kits. The idea throughout the initial weeks of the virus was to follow Trump’s lead, keep the numbers of coronavirus cases as low as possible, and hope for the best. Continue reading.
Update: Trump’s campaign issued