Trump Claims He Didn't Known (But He was Told 10 Times)

Trump spent most of his Monday briefing just trying to make excuses for why he was so slow to act regarding the Coronavirus pandemic. He bragged that he had done exactly the right thing.

He didn't.

Trump did nothing until January 31st, when he banned travel to the U.S. from China. But even that was too late. Over 380,000 people had arrived in the U.S. from China by that date (after the virus was known to be in China). And even after January 31st, another 40,000 people arrived from China. None of those people were given a test for Coronavirus.

After January 31st, nothing else was done by Trump until the middle of March. Why? Nothing was done in all of February and the first couple of weeks in March -- even though the cases were beginning to pile up in the United States.

Trump is trying to say he didn't know how serious the Coronavirus pandemic was. That's just not true. There were at least 10 times before the beginning of March that there were notifications of how serious the pandemic was or could be. He just ignored all of those warnings. He gambled that the virus would go away without him having to do anything (which he feared would hurt his re-election chances). He lost that gamble, and thousands of Americans have paid with their lives (and thousands more will do so).

Here (from Axios.com) are at least 10 notifications that Trump ignored before March:

On Jan. 18, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar first briefed Trump on the threat of the virus in a phone call, the New York Times reports. Trump made his first public comments about the virus on Jan. 22, saying he was not concerned about a pandemic and that "we have it totally under control."

On Jan. 27, White House aides met with then-acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney to try to get senior officials to take the virus threat more seriously, the Washington Post reports. Joe Grogan, the head of the White House Domestic Policy Council, warned it could cost Trump his re-election.

On Jan. 29, economic adviser Peter Navarro warned the White House in a memo addressed to the National Security Council that COVID-19 could take more than half a million American lives and cause nearly $6 trillion in economic damage. 

On Jan. 30, Azar warned Trump in a subsequent call that the virus could become a pandemic and that China should be criticized for its lack of transparency, per the Times. Trump dismissed Azar as alarmist and rejected the idea of criticizing China.

Also on Jan. 30, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a global health emergency. WHO has only done so five times since gaining that power in 2005.

On Feb. 5, senators urged the administration in a briefing to take the virus more seriously and asked if additional funds were necessary. The administration made no requests at the time for emergency funding.

On Feb. 14, a memo was drafted by health officials in coordination with the National Security Council that recommended the targeted use of "quarantine and isolation measures," per the Times. Officials planned to present Trump with the memo when he returned from India on Feb. 25, but the meeting was canceled.

On Feb. 21, the White House coronavirus task force conducted a mock exercise of the pandemic. The group concluded that the U.S. would need to implement aggressive social distancing, even if it caused mass disruption to the economy and American lives, per the Times.

On Feb. 23, Navarro doubled down on his warnings in another memo, this time addressed to the president, stating that up to 2 million Americans could die of the virus. 

On Feb. 25, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Nancy Messonnier publicly warned of the virus threat and said "we need to be preparing for significant disruption in our lives.” Trump reportedly called Azar fuming that Messonnier had scared people unnecessarily and caused the stock market to plummet, per the Times.