Trump's Security Team Is Careless And Incompetent

You may think my title is a bit over the top, but consider the following:

As far back as 2023, the Defense Department had sent a memo warning government officials not to use the Signal texting system for any official government meetings - warning it was capable of being hacked by Russia.

NSA Mike Waltz arranged a meeting of defense and security officials using the Signal system.

Waltz then accidentally(?) added a journalist to the text group Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic.

Defense Department head Pete Hegseth then posted the particulars of an attack on Yemen to the group (even though the group didn't need to know the specifics of the attack).

Once the attack was completed and the journalist reported the security blunder, Tulsi Gabbard told Congress that no secret intelligence was discussed in the text meeting. But that was a lie. Hegseth's text had included the name of the country to be attacked, the specific places within the country to be attacked, the times each attack would happen, and the particular weapons to be used in the attacks - all top secret information.

Any soldier that revealed this type of information before an attack - to a journalist or anyone else - would have been severely punished and probably criminally charged. But these guys will not have to pay, because the narcissist-in-chief can't admit any mistakes, and won't let anyone else in his administration do so.

That doesn't change the fact though. They were careless and incompetent. And that should worry the American people - and our allies.

Don't Despair - The Electoral Pendulum Swings Both Ways

We are entering a dark time. Trump wants to take this country backwards, and with the help of a Republican Congress and a radical right-wing Supreme Court, he will probably accomplish much of what he wants to do. But don't despair. Incompetence and a radical agenda by Trump and the GOP will swing the pendulum back to rationality and the Democratic Party.

Andy Borowitz, who usually writes satire on politics, has written a serious message (and is offering it free to all readers) of hope and historical reality. I urge you to read the whole thing. Here is part of what he wrote: 

In 1972, the Democratic presidential nominee, George McGovern, won just 37.5 percent of the vote, carrying only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia for a total of 17 Electoral College votes. He didn’t even win his home state, South Dakota.

In 1984, Democrat Walter Mondale did carry his native Minnesota, but that was as good as it got for him. In the Electoral College, he fared even worse than McGovern, with a whopping 13 votes.

In the aftermath of these thrashings, the Democratic Party lay in smoldering ruins, and Republicans looked like indestructible conquerors.

Now, some might argue that those GOP victories, though statistically more resounding than Trump’s, weren’t nearly as alarming, because he’s a criminal and wannabe autocrat.

But Trump’s heinousness shouldn’t make us nostalgic for Nixon and Reagan. They were also criminals—albeit unindicted ones. And they were up to all manner of autocratic shit—until they got caught. . . 

The hubris engendered by both men’s landslides propelled them to reckless behavior in their second terms—behavior that came back to haunt them. Nixon was forced to resign the presidency; Reagan was lucky to escape impeachment.

Of course, Trump would be justified in believing that no matter how reckless he becomes, he’ll never pay a price. He’s already been impeached—twice—only to be acquitted by his Republican toadies in the Senate. And now that the right-wing supermajority of the Supreme Court has adorned him with an immunity idol, he’ll likely feel free to commit crimes that Nixon and Reagan could only dream of. Who’ll stop him from using his vast power to persecute his voluminous list of enemies?

Well, the enemy most likely to thwart Trump in his second term might be one who isn’t on his list: himself. The seeds of Trump’s downfall may reside in two promises he made to win this election: the mass deportation of immigrants and the elimination of inflation.

Trump’s concept of a plan to deport 20 million immigrants is as destined for success as were two of his other brainchildren, Trump University and Trump Steaks. The US doesn’t have anything approaching the law-enforcement capacity to realize this xenophobic fever dream.

And as for Trump’s war on inflation, the skyrocketing prices caused by his proposed tariffs will make Americans nostalgic for pandemic-era price-gouging on Charmin. . . 

 I tend to agree with the British politician Enoch Powell (1912-1998), who observed that all political careers end in failure. I doubt that Trump, with his signature blend of inattention, impulsiveness, and incompetence, will avoid that fate.

2nd Quarter GDP Shows Biggest Drop Since Great Depression

From The New York Times:

Economic output fell at its fastest pace on record last spring as the coronavirus pandemic forced businesses across the United States to close their doors and kept millions of Americans shut in their homes for weeks.

Gross domestic product — the broadest measure of goods and services produced — fell 9.5 percent in the second quarter of the year, the Commerce Department said Thursday. On an annualized basis, the standard way of reporting quarterly economic data, G.D.P. fell at a rate of 32.9 percent.

The collapse was unprecedented in its speed and breathtaking in its severity. The only possible comparisons in modern American history came during the Great Depression and the demobilization after World War II, both of which occurred before the advent of modern economic statistics.

Donald Trump and the congressional Republicans would like you to believe the economy is ready to bounce back -- even better than before. That is not true!

This is an economy in deep trouble -- more trouble than most Americans have seen in their lifetimes. And it won't be fixed by reopening businesses and schools. That will just help to spread the Coronavirus, and the economy cannot begin to heal until the virus is brought under control -- which the country is not even close to doing.

We cannot expect the GDP numbers to magically bounce back in the third quarter either. We are already one month into the third quarter, and the virus is still raging across the country. It is likely that the third quarter GDP will look as bad as the second quarter does.

This is going to be an extended recession, and anyone expect the economy to quickly bounce back is living in a dream world. Many small businesses will not recover from the recession, and many workers will be left without jobs even after the virus is controlled. The Bush recession took well over a year for the economy to recover, and even longer for many Americans to recover their own financial position. The Trump Recession could last even longer.

We should remember that the Trump recession didn't have to happen. If Trump had acted quickly and competently once notified of the Coronavirus (like Obama did after learning of Ebola), the economy might not have even had to be shut down. But Trump delayed doing anything for far too long, and then did not do enough. That continues to be the case.

The Self-Destruction Of Trump And Republican Officials

This national election is starting to remind me a bit of the Texas election for governor in 1990. That year, the Republicans nominated Clayton Williams as their candidate, and most people thought he would easily sail to victory. But that was before he started talking. He started with a "joke" about how any woman who's being raped should just lay back and enjoy it. Then he made it worse every week with another outrageous pronouncement. He destroyed his own campaign, and the result was that Texas got a great Democratic governor -- Ann Richards.

Donald Trump is doing the same thing on a national level. All the Democrats had to do was nominate a decent candidate (Joe Biden), and then watch as Trump self-destructs -- and take many other Republicans down with him.

Donald Trump was already very unpopular with the public. His job approval ratings have been upside-down since he was sworn into office. Now he is just making things worse with his lying, incompetence, and outrageous actions -- especially his gross mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The charts above are from a New York Times article by Lynn Vavreck and Christopher Warshaw. They did a study of polling, and they found that in the counties with the most Coronavirus deaths Donald Trump is losing support fast -- and the GOP senators are also losing support. The top chart shows the decline in support of Donald Trump in those counties, and the second chart shows the decline in support for Republican senators.

Trump can't blame Democrats (or China or anyone else) for this. It is wholly his doing -- and the American voters know it. Trump delayed reacting to the virus, allowing it to get a foothold in this country. Then he failed to provide enough testing. Compounding those terrible mistakes, he then urged states to reopen their economies -- even though the virus had not been controlled. The result has been the virus has infected over 4 million Americans and killed over 150,000 of them -- and there's no reason to believe that either will slow anytime soon.

Trump poor job approval was always going to make it tough for him to be re-elected. But his mishandling of COVID-19 is a classic example of self-destruction. Voters want a competent president who can control the virus and get the economy back on track. Every week, Trump shows them that he's not the person who can do that.

Biden and Democratic senate candidates don't have to look great to win -- just competent.

Trump Phone Calls To Other Leaders Alarmed Officials

We know that Trump's incompetence and narcissism has damaged the reputation of the United States in the world. But it is even worse than a loss of face. His behavior, especially on the phone to other world leaders, has made the world a much more dangerous place -- and it even alarmed officials in his own administration.

Here is part of how Carl Bernstein reports it at CNN.com:

In hundreds of highly classified phone calls with foreign heads of state, President Donald Trump was so consistently unprepared for discussion of serious issues, so often outplayed in his conversations with powerful leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and so abusive to leaders of America's principal allies, that the calls helped convince some senior US officials -- including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers and his longest-serving chief of staff -- that the President himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States, according to White House and intelligence officials intimately familiar with the contents of the conversations.

The calls caused former top Trump deputies -- including national security advisers H.R. McMaster and John Bolton, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and White House chief of staff John Kelly, as well as intelligence officials -- to conclude that the President was often "delusional," as two sources put it, in his dealings with foreign leaders. The sources said there was little evidence that the President became more skillful or competent in his telephone conversations with most heads of state over time. Rather, he continued to believe that he could either charm, jawbone or bully almost any foreign leader into capitulating to his will, and often pursued goals more attuned to his own agenda than what many of his senior advisers considered the national interest.

These officials' concerns about the calls, and particularly Trump's deference to Putin, take on new resonance with reports the President may have learned in March that Russia had offered the Taliban bounties to kill US troops in Afghanistan -- and yet took no action. CNN's sources said there were calls between Putin and Trump about Trump's desire to end the American military presence in Afghanistan but they mentioned no discussion of the supposed Taliban bounties.

By far the greatest number of Trump's telephone discussions with an individual head of state were with Erdogan, who sometimes phoned the White House at least twice a week and was put through directly to the President on standing orders from Trump, according to the sources. Meanwhile, the President regularly bullied and demeaned the leaders of America's principal allies, especially two women: telling Prime Minister Theresa May of the United Kingdom she was weak and lacked courage; and telling German Chancellor Angela Merkel that she was "stupid."

Trump incessantly boasted to his fellow heads of state, including Saudi Arabia's autocratic royal heir Mohammed bin Salman and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, about his own wealth, genius, "great" accomplishments as President, and the "idiocy" of his Oval Office predecessors, according to the sources.

In his conversations with both Putin and Erdogan, Trump took special delight in trashing former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and suggested that dealing directly with him -- Trump -- would be far more fruitful than during previous administrations. "They didn't know BS," he said of Bush and Obama -- one of several derisive tropes the sources said he favored when discussing his predecessors with the Turkish and Russian leaders. . . .

One person familiar with almost all the conversations with the leaders of Russia, Turkey, Canada, Australia and western Europe described the calls cumulatively as 'abominations' so grievous to US national security interests that if members of Congress heard from witnesses to the actual conversations or read the texts and contemporaneous notes, even many senior Republican members would no longer be able to retain confidence in the President.

The insidious effect of the conversations comes from Trump's tone, his raging outbursts at allies while fawning over authoritarian strongmen, his ignorance of history and lack of preparation as much as it does from the troubling substance, according to the sources. While in office, then- Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats expressed worry to subordinates that Trump's telephone discussions were undermining the coherent conduct of foreign relations and American objectives around the globe, one of CNN's sources said. And in recent weeks, former chief of staff Kelly has mentioned the damaging impact of the President's calls on US national security to several individuals in private.

Two sources compared many of the President's conversations with foreign leaders to Trump's recent press "briefings" on the coronavirus pandemic: free form, fact-deficient stream-of-consciousness ramblings, full of fantasy and off-the-wall pronouncements based on his intuitions, guesswork, the opinions of Fox News TV hosts and social media misinformation. . . .

In his phone exchanges with Putin, the sources reported, the President talked mostly about himself, frequently in over-the-top, self-aggrandizing terms: touting his "unprecedented" success in building the US economy; asserting in derisive language how much smarter and "stronger" he is than "the imbeciles" and "weaklings" who came before him in the presidency (especially Obama); reveling in his experience running the Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow, and obsequiously courting Putin's admiration and approval. Putin "just outplays" him, said a high-level administration official -- comparing the Russian leader to a chess grandmaster and Trump to an occasional player of checkers. While Putin "destabilizes the West," said this source, the President of the United States "sits there and thinks he can build himself up enough as a businessman and tough guy that Putin will respect him.". . .

Almost never, according to CNN's sources, would Trump read the briefing materials prepared for him by the CIA and NSC staff in advance of his calls with heads of state. . . .

The common, overwhelming dynamic that characterizes Trump's conversations with both authoritarian dictators and leaders of the world's greatest democracies is his consistent assertion of himself as the defining subject and subtext of the calls -- almost never the United States and its historic place and leadership in the world, according to sources intimately familiar with the calls. . . .

"There was no sense of 'Team America' in the conversations," or of the United States as an historic force with certain democratic principles and leadership of the free world, said the official. "The opposite. It was like the United States had disappeared. It was always 'Just me'."

One Of The Worst Presidential Failures In American History

(This chart is from ourworldindata.org.)

If you listen to Donald Trump, you will hear that the COVID-19 pandemic is virtually over in the United States, that it is under control, and that the Trump administration has done an excellent job in accomplishing that. Nothing could be faster from the truth!

The truth is that the response of the Trump administration has been nothing short of an unmitigated disaster, and that is due to the actions (or inaction) of Trump himself. It is one of the worst presidential failures to a crisis in the history of this country.

The following is just part of an excellent column by Paul Waldman in The Washington Post:

There are countries around the world, large and small, where aggressive government action and a mutual commitment by the population have gotten the coronavirus pandemic under control. The United States is not one of them.

Well over 2 million Americans have been infected, over 115,000 of us have died, and rather than falling, our rates of new infections and deaths seem to have stabilized at horrifically high rates.

Yet now, in a propaganda effort that can only be described as obscene, the Trump administration is trying to convince us not only that the pandemic is all but behind us, but also that its spectacularly incompetent response has been a great triumph.

This will without a doubt go down as one of the worst presidential failures in American history. And we can see now that it had three distinct (if overlapping) phases.

The first was the denial phase, in which President Trump dismissed the danger from the virus and did almost nothing to prepare for its arrival. The second was the mismanagement phase, in which his administration utterly failed to control the virus as it swept across the country.

The third was the polarization phase, in which, for his own vulgar political reasons, Trump attacked Democratic governors trying to contain the virus, discouraged social distancing and mask-wearing, and quite intentionally created an atmosphere in which loud refusal to take the measures that we know reduce the spread of infection is how you prove you’re a loyal Republican.

We’re now seeing the effects, as states where Republican governors lifted stay-at-home orders and encouraged people to resume normal commercial and social activities are experiencing dramatic spikes in infections. . . .

This pandemic is an era-defining catastrophe, and it didn’t have to be this way. It’s almost impossible to imagine a president more ill-prepared, by virtue of experience and temperament and judgment, to handle it, and all our worst fears have come true. Don’t let him or any of his lackeys tell you otherwise.

The Staggering Cost Of Donald Trump's Incompetence

The United States and South Korea both discovered their first case of Coronavirus on the same day -- January 20th.

South Korea immediately sprang into action. They began testing, contact tracing, and social distancing. Those actions allowed them to get control of the pandemic in their country. To date, they have only had about 267 deaths (or about 5.21 deaths per million people).

The United States did none of that. In fact, the Trump administration delayed a full two months before it recognized the need for testing, and it still hasn't distributed enough tests to allow us to get a full picture of the viral spread in the country. To date, nearly 100,000 deaths have occurred from the virus (or about 295.22 deaths per million people).

It did not have to be that way. If the Trump administration had acted quickly (like South Korea did), they could have contained the virus and prevented many thousands of deaths. In other words, Donald Trump's has cost the lives of many thousands of Americans -- and his demand for the economy to reopen insures that many more thousands will die. This nation is paying a heavy price for Trump's incompetence!

Here is part of what Peter Baker (The New York Times) has to say about the number of Coronavirus deaths in this country:

This was a death toll that Mr. Trump once predicted would never be reached. In late February, he said there were only 15 coronavirus cases in the United States, understating even then the actual number, and declared that “the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.” In the annals of the American presidency, it would be hard to recall a more catastrophically wrong prediction. Even after he later acknowledged that it would not be zero, he insisted the death toll would fall “substantially below the 100,000” mark.

As it stands now, the coronavirus has infected 1.6 million and taken so many lives it is as if an entire midsize American city — say Boca Raton, Fla., just to pick an example — simply disappeared. The toll is about to match the 100,000 killed in the United States by the pandemic of 1968 and is closing in on the outbreak of 1957-58, which killed 116,000. At this pace, it will stand as the country’s deadliest public health disaster since the great influenza of 1918-20 — all at the same time the nation confronts the most severe economic collapse since the Great Depression.

The historical comparisons are breathtaking. More Americans have died of the coronavirus in the last 12 weeks than died in the Vietnam and Korean Wars combined and nearly twice as many as died of battle wounds during World War I. The death toll has nearly matched the number of people killed by the initial blasts of the world’s first atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In terms of American deaths, it is the equivalent of 22 Iraq wars, 33 Sept. 11 attacks, 41 Afghanistan wars, 42 Pearl Harbors or 25,000 Benghazis.

Trump Is Unfit - The GOP Knows And Don't Care

Donald Trump is unfit for the presidency. He has shown that many times since being sworn into office.

He has distanced us from our friends and placated our enemies -- and in the process has abdicated this nation's leadership among nations. He has shown he will not respect treaties and agreements, even when they are advantageous to the United States.

But his total incompetence has been starkly revealed by the current global pandemic. While most other nations act to protect their own citizens, Trump cares only about his own re-election. He's demanding the reopening of the economy in spite of what public health officials say -- and in doing so, he will be killing many thousands more American citizens.

His incompetence and unfitness for the office he holds is no secret. It is even known by Republican officials. But they back him anyway. They care only about trying to hold on to power.

The following is part of an article in The Washington Post by Paul Waldman:

The truth is that Trump is not much more despicable of a human being than he has always been; it’s just that standard Trumpian behavior becomes more horrifying when it occurs during an ongoing national crisis. It is reality that changed around him, and he was incapable of responding to it.

We all know this. In public, Republicans may say that the real villain in the pandemic is China, or that all those deaths — and the tens of thousands yet to come — were inevitable, or that it is essential to get the economy moving. But they know as well as the rest of us do what a catastrophic failure Trump has been.

They must own the moral choice they now make. In 2016, they said Trump would grow serious and sober once he was faced with the awesome responsibilities of the office. There was little reason at the time to think it would happen, but it was at least possible.

No one can say that now. Not only do we know who Trump is, we know who he will always be. And we know that reelecting him will be disastrous in a hundred ways.

If you gave many Republicans in Washington truth serum, they’d say, “Of course he’s unfit to be president. Of course he’s corrupt, of course he’s incompetent, of course he’s the most dishonest person ever to step into the Oval Office. But I can live with that, because him being reelected means Republicans keep power, we get more conservative judges and we get all the policies we favor.”

That is the choice they’re making. We all know it, even if they’ll never say it out loud. . . .

And as we approach another election, they’ll tell themselves that Trump isn’t as bad as he looks, or that Joe Biden is a monster, or that all that matters is winning.

In the future, when we look back on this dark period, we should resist the temptation to focus solely on Trump himself. To do so would be to excuse those who know exactly what he is but pretend they can work to keep him in office and remain unsullied. They cannot, and their moral culpability becomes clearer every day.

Trump's Incompetent Delaying Cost Thousands Of Lives

Trump loves to tell Americans that his administration has done a great job of controlling the Coronavirus in this country. At the same time, he says he is not responsible for the spread of the virus and loss of American lives (approaching 100,000 deaths as I write this).

He is wrong on both counts.

The Trump administration has not done a good job of controlling the Coronavirus pandemic. Trump waited too long and has done too little. That is why the virus continues to rage throughout the country.

And Trump is responsible for the spread of the virus and the unnecessary loss of American lives.

Even after delaying action for the entire months of January and February, Trump still could have saved many thousands of lives by insisting on social distancing just a week or two earlier -- by March 1st or 8th instead of later.

Here's how The New York Times describes how lives could have been saved:

If the United States had begun imposing social distancing measures one week earlier than it did in March, about 36,000 fewer people would have died in the coronavirus outbreak, according to new estimates from Columbia University disease modelers.

And if the country had begun locking down cities and limiting social contact on March 1, two weeks earlier than most people started staying home, the vast majority of the nation’s deaths — about 83 percent — would have been avoided, the researchers estimated.

Under that scenario, about 54,000 fewer people would have died by early May.

The enormous cost of waiting to take action reflects the unforgiving dynamics of the outbreak that swept through American cities in early March. Even small differences in timing would have prevented the worst exponential growth, which by April had subsumed New York City, New Orleans and other major cities, the researchers found.

“It’s a big, big difference. That small moment in time, catching it in that growth phase, is incredibly critical in reducing the number of deaths,” said Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at Columbia and the leader of the research team.

The findings are based on infectious disease modeling that gauges how reduced contact between people starting in mid-March slowed transmission of the virus. Dr. Shaman’s team modeled what would have happened if those same changes had taken place one or two weeks earlier and estimated the spread of infections and deaths until May 3.

The results show that as states reopen, outbreaks can easily get out of control unless officials closely monitor infections and immediately clamp down on new flare-ups. And they show that each day that officials waited to impose restrictions in early March came at a great cost.

This Republican Is Not Afraid To Tell The Truth

The Republican base, and most Republican officials, seem happy to let Donald Trump do anything he wants. They don't mind that he has alienated most of our allies. They don't care that he lies an average of 15 times a day. And they don't seem to care that he has mishandled the Coronavirus pandemic -- unnecessarily costing the lives of thousands of Americans.

But there are still a few Republicans who haven't abandoned their honor and morality. One of that few is Steve Schmidt. Schmidt's GOP credentials are impeccable -- having worked on the campaigns of George W. Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and John McCain (where he was a senior campaign strategist for his 2008 presidential bid).

Schmidt has been critical of Donald Trump in the past, and now is especially critical of Trump's mishandling of this pandemic.

Here is what he told MCNBC's Ari Melber in a recent interview:

I think the White House has done, historically, very poorly in this. This is one of the most significant crises in American history. It’s certainly the largest American crisis of our lifetimes, and it’s been the most inept response by the executive, by the president, think, with regard to any crisis in American history but, certainly, any crisis in our lifetimes. And we look at a president, who is so clearly in over his head and out of his depth, who has been dishonest, who has been imprecise, who’s been inaccurate, and whose deadly indecision will be paid for with the lives of tens of thousands of Americans, as this virus escalated to a place it never need have gotten. And that is all because of the wasted month of February, where the president was hate tweeting, firing people that he was angry with over impeachment, going on campaign rallies and golfing. And, now, the country is paying the price for that. We should be careful to understand that when the same guy says, ‘Well, it’ll be back in September but we’ll make it go away really quick,’ is the same guy when there were 15 cases in the country, said, ‘Soon, it would be gone to zero and it would disappear like magic.’ The lack of credibility in these evening news events is epic and unlike everything we’ve ever seen. It’s a Baghdad Bob show every night of the week, day after day, the airing of the grievances, the airing of his anger issues. The attacks on the governors. We see every night all of the qualities you never, ever want to see in a leader in a crisis when lives are at stake.

Most Think Trump Waited Too Long To Act On Coronavirus

The chart above is from the Economist / YouGov Poll done between April 5th and 7th of a national sample of 1,500 adults, with a 3.1 point margin of error.

Donald Trump would like Americans to think he has acted exactly right regarding the current pandemic. But most Americans disagree. About 57% say he waited too long to act. Only 34% think he acted in an appropriate time frame.

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.

Federal Supply System For Coronavirus Is "Crony Capitalism"

Donald Trump's handling of the Coronavirus epidemic in this country has been nothing short of incompetent. He acted far too slowly after being notified of the coming epidemic as early as December of 2019. He finally put a ban on travel from China, but only after nearly 400,000 people had flown from China to the United States. And even though it quickly became obvious that the ban was too late and the virus was spreading in the U.S., he took not further action until about the middle of March.

His slow action was also a primary cause of the shortage of ventilators, tests, and protective gear for medical workers. He has refused to actually use the Defense Production Act, and even though he now brags about what he has done, those shortages still exist. And putting Jared Kushner in charge of a committee overseeing the supply chain has just caused chaos -- piling greedy incompetence on top of greedy incompetence. He favors his buddies in large corporations over smaller business that have proven they can deliver. It is the very essence of "crony capitalism".

The following is part of an article from NBC News:

For weeks, Trump has resisted pressure to use the full power of his office to temporarily turn the private sector into an arm of the federal government in a national emergency. But he and his lieutenants instead have used the crisis to make federal assets and personnel ancillary to industry, according to NBC's interviews with dozens of public- and private-sector sources involved in various aspects of the coronavirus response.

In doing so, the vice president's coronavirus task force — mostly through a supply-chain unit led by Admiral John Polowczyk and heavily influenced by White House adviser Jared Kushner — has favored some of the nation's largest corporations and ignored smaller producers of goods and services with long track records of meeting emergency needs, according to officials at multiple federal agencies and people familiar with contracting.

They have also operated almost entirely in the dark, releasing few details of their arrangements with the big companies; created a new and convoluted emergency response system; and sown confusion and distrust in the states and among the people who need medical supplies.

There is virtually no accountability for their decisions about how and where to allocate emergency equipment, a vacuum that has produced strong criticism from Democratic congressional officials, who are demanding answers.

The story of the supply-chain group, a power center within the larger task force run by Vice President Mike Pence, is one of chaos, secrecy and ineptitude, these officials said. Governors, local officials and veterans of federal emergency response say it has deeply complicated the national fight against the pandemic. . . .

With so many ad-hoc groups purchasing goods and services for the crisis — the White House coronavirus task force, one of its seven subsidiary task forces, or other government agencies — it’s impossible to tell whether taxpayers are getting the best deals possible or are being gouged. . . .

The supply chain task force leaders pushed aside the existing federal emergency management response teams that had long-established methods for engaging assistance from the public and private sectors. Instead, they first reached out to personal contacts, according to people familiar with their operations. To the extent that they have absorbed some of the old practices over the course of time, with the help of career officials intent on bringing their actions in line with protocol, it has taken time to figure out their own system.

"Jared and his friends decided they were going to do their thing," said the senior government official involved in the response effort. "It cost weeks." . . .

In one wrinkle that has had repercussions for small businesses and communities around the country, the task force ended FEMA's long-running practice of using its regional offices to locate, pay for and acquire goods from smaller local vendors in an emergency, preferring instead to contract with heavyweights. . . .

Working from a war room on the first-floor concourse between two towers of the FEMA’s leased headquarters in southwest Washington, the task force was handed the keys to the deepest treasury in the world, and it empowered the Trump administration to quietly corner the scarce market of medical goods in the United States and overseas. . . .

Using what it calls a "40-40-20" formula, the task force buys whatever it can get its hands on and then allocates the goods, according to the people familiar with the response effort. The first 20 percent is reserved for the federal government’s Strategic National Stockpile. The task force directs where the next 40 percent goes, and the company selling the product gets to deliver the remaining 40 percent as it sees fit. . . .

In practice, the 40-40-20 arrangement means the federal task force can re-route a shipment that is already on its way to a state, city or hospital that previously had agreed to buy it from the supplier. . . .

Right now, what the public is getting from its money is a process that state and local officials, along with the frontline hospitals and medical personnel, have been forced to spend valuable time trying to figure out. In some cases, they have wasted that time bidding against the federal government for supplies.

The only people who claim to understand what’s going on are political officials who work closely with Trump, Pence and Kushner — and representatives of some of the companies in the supply chain.

Why Does The United States Have Such A Large Percentage Of Coronavirus Cases And Deaths?

According to the CDC website, about 170 nations now have cases of the Coronavirus within their borders. It truly is a worldwide pandemic. Since the United States has approximately 4.4% of the world's population, one might expect it would have about that same percentage of Coronavirus cases and deaths. Unfortunately, that is not true.

The United States has a much larger share of both cases and deaths than it should have. It has about 26% of the cases worldwide, and 13%-14% of the deaths worldwide. The percentage of deaths is lower than the percentage of cases primarily because of the heroic work of public health workers (doctors, nurses, etc.). But both cases and deaths are much higher than they should be. Why?

I believe it is due to a lack of federal leadership. Our government failed to act in a timely way, and that allowed the virus to spread faster and further than it should have.

Donald Trump likes to brag about his banning people entering this country from China. He seemed to think that was all he needed to do to stop the spread of the virus. But look at the chart above. By the time Trump imposed the ban on January 31st, 381,000 people had flown from China to the United States during the month of January. In other words, Trump locked the barn door after the animals had already escaped. The virus was already in the United States and spreading.

Since the ban another 40,000 have entered the United States from China. Some might think that 40,000 were tested for the virus before being allowed to enter. That is NOT the case. They were all asked to answer a short series of questions about where they had been and how they felt, and some had their temperature taken at the airport -- but they were not tested for the virus.

But even though the ban was too late and ineffective, the virus still could have been contained -- if Trump had acted at the end of January. During the latter part of the Obama administration, a plan was developed by public health officials on how the nation should deal with the start of a pandemic. Trump refused to put that plan into action. In fact, he delayed doing anything else until well into March.

He refused the tests offered by the World Health Organization, and that resulted in a delay in widespread testing for the virus. Trump now brags that "anyone who wants a test can get one", but that is not true. Most parts of the country barely have enough tests for doctors to test only those with symptoms of Coronavirus.

Trump also could have invoked the Defense Production Act much earlier, and demanded that industry produce the tests, the protective gear for medical workers, and the ventilators needed to save the sickest patients. He didn't, and still is depending on corporations doing this on their own. That has resulted in severe shortages that did not have to happen.

Because of Trump's ignorant and incompetent inaction, the United States has not been able to get ahead of the pandemic. It is struggling to catch up. Trump has failed the leadership test in his first real crisis. Because of that, many more Americans will get sick, and too many will die unnecessarily.