Trump is trying to rewrite the narrative on his coronavirus response.
He might just succeed.
As President Trump tries to rewrite the narrative about his history of dangerous delays on the coronavirus pandemic — setting a baseline that 200,000 deaths is actually a victory — it’s worth remembering that he was still downplaying it either as a hoax or overblown as recently as March 10.
So, lest we forget, here’s the actual history.
In the wake of the Ebola outbreak, the Obama-Biden administration created a permanent pandemic monitoring and command group inside the National Security Council. This command structure was dismantled by the Trump White House in 2018.
The Obama-Biden administration’s detailed, 69-page, step-by-step “pandemic playbook” for the federal government included direction for early action to develop and expand testing capacity, procure more personal protective equipment, and enact the Defense Production Act.
The Obama-Biden NSC team briefed Trump’s team on Jan. 13, 2017, on the biggest national security threats, including this one: an emerging pandemic of a novel influenza virus that originates in China and spreads around the world.
Trump’s first budget in office proposed a 20% cut to the CDC. Former CDC director Tom Frieden said a cut to CDC like that “risks Americans’ health and safety” and “would increase illness, death, risk to Americans, and health care costs.”
Congress didn’t accept Trump’s 20% cut to CDC’s budget in FY18. So Trump proposed that huge cut again in FY19. Congress again rejected the Trump CDC cuts.
Health journalists who report on pandemics noted that the Trump White House’s lack of respect for the science would inevitably leave us unprepared. The Trump administration “is setting up the U.S. to botch a pandemic response,” wrote Vox Senior Health Correspondent Julia Belluz.
Experts kept trying to warn Trump. He ignored them. Bill Gates said he directly warned President Trump of the threat; that the White House wasn’t prepared for the “significant probability of a large and lethal modern-day pandemic occurring in our lifetimes.”
The Trump White House eliminated the National Security Council’s global health security team in the spring of 2018, fired the entire pandemic response chain of command, and didn’t replace them. In effect, Trump dismantled the coordinated command center structure needed for global pandemics.
At the same time, the Trump administration cut CDC’s efforts to prevent global disease outbreak by 80 percent and eliminated its pandemic prevention activities in 39 of 49 countries. In effect, Trump shut down CDC’s ability to see COVID-19 coming.
In the summer of 2019, the Trump White House eliminated a “key public health position in Beijing intended to help detect disease outbreaks in China.” That job? Providing real-time, critical information to U.S. officials at the outset of a pandemic.
When was the Trump White House first alerted to the existence and spread of the coronavirus in China by Chinese officials? January 3, 2020. Trump dismissed the intelligence briefings and warnings.
Before the virus had reached American shores, U.S. intelligence agencies issued “ominous, classified warnings” to Trump about the dangers posed by the coronavirus pandemic. But Trump did nothing even though “the system was blinking red.”
Throughout January, Trump consistently dismissed the emerging threat. “Trump’s advisers struggled to get him to take the virus seriously,” wrote The Washington Post. White House staff begged then chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to intervene. Nothing worked. Trump didn’t listen or act.
But others around the world were taking it seriously. Testing, tracing and quarantines are the core of a meaningful national public health plan, and almost every other developed country except the United States was recognizing the urgency of moving in that direction. Virologists in Berlin produced the first coronavirus test in mid-January. The Trump White House, meanwhile, sat on its hands.
The first COVID-19 cases were announced in the United States and South Korea on Jan. 21. The WHO assessed the global risk of the coronavirus to be “high at the global level.”
Unlike the Trump White House — which still has no actual public health education strategy beyond allowing the president to talk about himself randomly from a podium in the Rose Garden — South Korea leaders put on a full-court blitz to inform and test its citizens in real time beginning at the end of January. Ads, alerts and reminders were ubiquitous.
South Korean leaders met with medical companies in late January and urged them to immediately begin developing test kits for mass production. They promised emergency approval and funding. As of April 2, the United States still has no testing plan.
At the same time, in late January, the Trump White House decided not to use a WHO virus test as a bridge until a U.S. test was developed. No U.S. testing plan emerged. The Trump White House’s efforts to produce its own national testing regime “faltered in almost every way imaginable,” said one public health expert.
Trump later said the WHO test (validated by three independent laboratories) was “a bad test.” But the White House coronavirus coordinator said it was effective. WHO has now shipped 1.5 million of the same test kits to 120 other countries around the world, with no reports of faulty results.
On Jan. 22, Trump was asked if he was worried about a pandemic. “No. Not at all, “ he responded. “And we have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s…going to be just fine.”
Two days later, on Jan. 24, the CDC conducted a classified briefing on the pandemic for all U.S. senators. That same day, Trump tweeted “it will all work out well.” Over the next two weeks, Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler sold up to $3.1 million of stock — even as she and other GOP leaders in the Trump White House orbit dismissed the significance of the threat.
The Trump White House finally acted on Jan. 29, as WHO declared a global health emergency. It formed a task force. Trump banned travel to the United States from China. But 300,000 people had already traveled to the U.S. from China in January.
Even so, throughout February, Trump downplayed the threat. He said “I’m not concerned at all” on March 7. Three days later, he said “it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.” On March 11, WHO declared coronavirus a pandemic.
We know what has happened since. We are locked down for at least another 30 days.
President Trump now says 200,000 American deaths from the coronavirus pandemic is a victory for him. Many millions of Americans will likely believe this new narrative — even though it flies in the face of facts and actual history.
We could have been prepared. We were not. We could have avoided this. But we will not.
And we still have no national testing plan or an actual public health strategy.
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