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I’m sure someone else has done this, put I put together a comprehensive timeline of Trump and COVID. I’ve linked to a document that I am going to keep updated. In this thread I’m going to pull out some of the most infuriating items. https://globalstrategygroup.box.com/v/trump-coronavirus-timeline">https://globalstrategygroup.box.com/v/trump-c...
First, so many warnings. Trump claims “no one expected.” That is, of course, bullshit. The Obama-Biden admin gave them a literal playbook and warned them that this was one of the biggest threats to the US. Bill Gates, the Pentagon, and Trump’s own economists also warned them.
Second, the testing failure and the comparison to South Korea. The US and SK saw their first case on the same day. SK took it seriously, acted decisively, and focused on ramping up testing. Trump dithered, and then botched the US testing effort for months.
SK was able to minimize the number of cases and deaths in their country and avoid shutting down the economy. That could have been us, but Trump dithered. So instead, our cases are still skyrocketing, and our economy is in free fall and Trump was forced to beg SK for help.
Third, the massive failure on PPE. The next few tweets don’t even get into Trump’s refusal to invoke the DPA yet. I want to highlight Feb 5-7. Dem senators press Trump to request $ for supplies, but Trump CUTS the request by 75% and then ships 17 tons of supplies to China
The White House continues to ignore warnings about the critical shortage of PPE – and continues to
ship PPE to other countries instead of filling requests from US states, even though doctors and nurses are being forced to use bandanas and garbage bags to protect themselves.
ship PPE to other countries instead of filling requests from US states, even though doctors and nurses are being forced to use bandanas and garbage bags to protect themselves.
Trump continues to downplay the problem, even suggesting that the shortage is due to doctors and nurses stealing supplies. And as of yesterday, in a PR coup for Putin and a huge embarrassment to the US, the country is accepting aid shipments of PPE from Russia.
Let’s talk about the DPA now. The DPA was a key part of the Obama-Biden playbook. Congressional Democrats began urging Trump to invoke it in mid-March and are joined by various experts. But after being lobbied by big business, Trump has STILL not invoked the Act.
I’m not going to get into all of the times Trump downplayed the threat since that’s been covered to extensively. Even though this also has been covered, I do want to highlight all the steps Trump took to dismantle our capability of responding to pandemics leading up to the crisis
We know Trump intentionally dismantled the command and control structure meant to coordinate a response to pandemics created by the Obama-Biden admin. He also eliminated a position in China that was specifically meant to provide early earning to disease outbreaks there.
He also tried his best to cut funding for the CDC from the moment he stepped into office, and was STILL pressing for cut in early March, as the crisis was snowballing.
Finally, we have Trump repeatedly ignoring public health experts. This, of course, culminates in his pledge to re-open the country by Easter, despite fierce opposition from his own top experts. He relents only when faced with polling showing it would be an electoral disaster.
Instead of listening to experts, he is calling baseball players for advice and putting his utterly unqualified son-in-law in charge of a shadow coronavirus taskforce that has no oversight or accountability.
What is the end result of all this? The US has, by far, the worst trajectory of coronavirus cases of any country in the world.
