Chances are you've already seen this tweet. It's gone viral many times. Back in October, months before we knew about COVID, Biden pointed out we're not prepared for a pandemic. He was absolutely right. But I also wondered to myself: what did Trump tweet that day? (thread)

Trump tweeted or RT'd 47 times that day. Here was his first tweet of the day: mocking Reps @TimRyan and @EricSwalwell for dropping out of the presidential race. At 8:12am.

And then Rep. @TimRyan again three minutes later.

At 8:32am, Trump posted a thread defending his action to abandon our long-time Kurdish allies to Turkish violence. Turkey is accused of using chemical weapons against Kurdish citizens, murdering many, among other war crimes. An estimated 300,000 Kurds have been displaced.

Most of the afternoon was spent tweeting + RTing about the impeachment inquiry into Trump's efforts to withhold foreign aid from Ukraine in exchange for damaging info on Biden. Remember the impeachment trial? That was in January. Here he credits @LindseyGrahamSC for helping him.

At 6:39pm, he publicly whined to Apple CEO Tim Book about the swipe function on the iPhone.

At 7:30pm, he went back to the impeachment inquiry, tweeting about the whistleblower in the Ukraine scandal.

Three minutes later, he publicly calls for his lawyers to sue Rep. @AdamSchiff.

There's mostly a bunch of RTing over the next several hours, and then at 11:39pm, Trump closed out the day with this video about opioid crisis. Opioid deaths have increased 13% from last year, and yet it's still somehow not the biggest health care crisis under Trump.

I was curious how much Trump had even talked about pandemics on Twitter--his main comms avenue--before this year. According to the database at http://thetrumparchive.com , just one time in 2014 and not since then before COVID.

So, why was Biden coincidentally talking about a pandemic months before COVID hit? Because he was listening. The previous day, the Global Health Security Index released a report stating that the U.S. was not prepared for a pandemic. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2019/10/24/none-these-countries-us-included-is-fully-prepared-pandemic-report-says/

The index ranked the United States 19th among countries evaluated in pandemic preparedness. The main factors driving down its rank? Among other things: low public confidence in the government's response capabilities. No kidding.

Biden read this and knew other things, like how Trump had disbanded the NSC Global Health Unit, which had included the federal government's pandemic response team. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/05/trump-obama-coronavirus-pandemic-response

Anyway, that's what these two candidates were thinking on Oct. 25th when scientists were ringing alarm bells about our pandemic response capabilities. I leave you with this tweet from that day at 5:10pm.

I think he's right. We do get it. Make a plan: http://iwillvote.com