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This is devastating material for @joebiden's cmpgn to use vs. @realdonaldtrump. Trump was forewarned by trusted advisors about the #coronavirus & didn't act. No Deep State conspiracy here. Just Trump was asleep at the wheel. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/us/politics/navarro-warning-trump-coronavirus.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur
Navarro, the architect of the tariff war and long a Trump confidante, provided the most stark warning possible to the Administration in January. “The lack of immune protection or an existing cure or vaccine would leave Americans defenseless." It doesn't get more bleak than that.
"A second memo that Mr. Navarro wrote, dated Feb. 23, warned of an “increasing probability of a full-blown COVID-19 pandemic that could infect as many as 100 million Americans, with a loss of life of as many as 1.2 million souls." Navarro also stressed the impact on the economy.
Navarro, I suspect, took seriously the #covid19 warnings given to him by his Chinese counterparts in trade negotiations. One might interpret Navarro's warnings as the product of a persuasive and sincere effort by China to warn the US via official channels.
Still, Trump didn't act. I think the answer is a simple one: the concept of being a real POTUS is completely foreign to him. He only plays a pretend POTUS on TV and the media and his base eat it up so long as the economy is decent and liberals get 'owned'.
Despite very clear, simple and tangible warnings from Navarro, Trump deflected it almost reflexively, which we see every day in the press room when he is faced w/a 'tough' question about how his government's deeds do not match its words.
My favorite line from this article, which encapsulates the farcical nature of this administration is other officials' dismissive attitude towards Navarro's insights, "their concerns look more prescient in hindsight than they actually were, other officials argue."
That's a bit like saying, 'you were 100% right but you just got lucky so f**k you anyway." Even funnier than that, Navarro recommended that the gov't to purchase PPE "estimating they would need “at least a billion face masks” over a four-to-six-month period." #coronavirus
So all that defensiveness and knee-jerk 'shields up' opposition to any question about the gov'ts response is b/c Trump knows he messed up and the receipts are there to prove it.
Of course, the @GOP is still invested in its gov't by white nationalism experiment and seems disinclined to do anything to check Trump, but it's notable how vulnerable @realdonaldtrump feels about his performance. He's an abject failure and it's plainly written on his face.
