Criminal negligence: Trump lied, people died – he must be held accountable

Famous last words from our “Dear Leader”:

Feb. 26: “So we’re at the low level. As they get better, we take them off the list, so that we’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time. So we’ve had very good luck.” — Trump at a White House briefing.

Feb. 26: “And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.” — Trump at a press conference.

Late on Saturday, the United States reached this grim milestone: The U.S. Now Has the Most Reported Coronavirus Deaths of Any Country:

According to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, as of early Sunday morning, the United States had 20,608 reported deaths from COVID-19, compared to Italy’s 19,468 fatalities. American losses now represent a little more than 18 percent of the global total of over 113,000.
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The death count is a solemn reminder of the Trump administration’s failure to prepare in the key months of January and February, despite knowing of the threat of a pandemic as early as November.

Donald Trump has succeeded in making “America First” alright. To paraphrase George W. Bush after Hurricane Katrina, “Heckuva job Trumpie!”

There will be a congressional investigation into this epic government failure as there has been after every major disaster in U.S. history to find out “what did we know, and when did we know it, and what did we do wrong” so that hopefully we do not repeat these errors again. Already, Adam Schiff and Kamala Harris Have Announced a Bipartisan Coronavirus Response Commission Bill. This will obviously not occur until the next Congress next year. The “Grim Reaper” of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, will make damn certain of that.

But the media has already begun and after action review of the failed response of the Trump administration to the coronavirus pandemic. Reporting from Axios, the New York Times, Washington Post, AP and other media outlets has revealed that Trump and his administration were repeatedly warned about the threat that the virus could pose to American lives and the economy. Earlier action could have curbed the spread.

On Saturday, the Washington Post reported the Trump administration has many task forces — but still no plan for beating covid-19 (excerpt):

One of the biggest obstacles to the virus response is Trump himself. Even the most dutiful plans and projects often get caught up in the chaos of the White House. Advisers spend significant time trying to manage the president and his whims — from successfully dissuading him from seeking to reopen the country at Easter to tempering his impulse to push unproven drugs as miracle elixirs.

Even the progress can feel halting. Scientists are working on a vaccine, but that is expected to take at least a year. Basic hospital supplies are still so lagging that on Thursday, Pence suggested that medical professionals “recycle gowns.” And some states have begun to formulate their own collective plan for defeating the virus without the help of the federal government.

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A former senior administration official offered a grimmer assessment of the overall situation.

“Everything they’re doing is responding to something that’s already happened,” said the official, who stays in touch with administration officials. “Coordination from this White House has never been a particular strong suit.”

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One senior administration official described it as a “little reality show drama. Every day we wait for the email. It’s like ‘Game of Thrones.’ ”

Buried deep in this reporting was this truly disturbing passage:

‘Let this wash over’

During one task force meeting in the Situation Room last month, Trump turned to Fauci and challenged him.

It was the day the administration was adding Ireland and the United Kingdom to its travel restrictions, and Trump wanted to understand why talk of “herd immunity” — allowing the coronavirus to sweep a nation largely unchecked, with the belief that those who survived would then be immune — was such a bad idea.

“Why don’t we let this wash over the country?” Trump asked, according to two people familiar with his comments, a question other administration officials say he has raised repeatedly in the Oval Office.

Fauci initially seemed confused by the term “wash over” but became alarmed once he understood what Trump was asking.

“Mr. President, many people would die,” Fauci said.

The president said he understood but since then has repeatedly made clear he wants to reopen things soon — although significant roadblocks remain.

In other words, Trump wanted to follow British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s initial response to the coronavirus pandemic, i.e., let it run its course to develop herd immunity, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. The U.K.’s Coronavirus ‘Herd Immunity’ Debacle. Boris Johnson paid for his ignorance by contracting the coronavirus and having to be admitted to intensive care last week. U.K.’s Boris Johnson, who initially advocated herd immunity, becomes symbol of the strategy’s danger.

On Sunday, the Associate Press analysis reported, Behind Trump’s Botched And Delayed Coronavirus Response.

Also on Sunday, the New York Times did a deep-dive analysis appropriately titled, He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump’s Failure on the Virus (excerpts):

Throughout January, as Mr. Trump repeatedly played down the seriousness of the virus and focused on other issues, an array of figures inside his government — from top White House advisers to experts deep in the cabinet departments and intelligence agencies — identified the threat, sounded alarms and made clear the need for aggressive action.

The president, though, was slow to absorb the scale of the risk and to act accordingly, focusing instead on controlling the message, protecting gains in the economy and batting away warnings from senior officials. It was a problem, he said, that had come out of nowhere and could not have been foreseen.

It was not only long foreseen by the experts, but was being reported in real time intelligence briefings at the White House.

Mr. Trump’s response was colored by his suspicion of and disdain for what he viewed as the “Deep State” — the very people in his government whose expertise and long experience might have guided him more quickly toward steps that would slow the virus, and likely save lives.

Decision-making was also complicated by a long-running dispute inside the administration over how to deal with China. The virus at first took a back seat to a desire not to upset Beijing during trade talks, but later the impulse to score points against Beijing left the world’s two leading powers further divided as they confronted one of the first truly global threats of the 21st century.

The shortcomings of Mr. Trump’s performance have played out with remarkable transparency as part of his daily effort to dominate television screens and the national conversation.

• • • The National Security Council office responsible for tracking pandemics received intelligence reports in early January predicting the spread of the virus to the United States, and within weeks was raising options like keeping Americans home from work and shutting down cities the size of Chicago. Mr. Trump would avoid such steps until March.
    • Despite Mr. Trump’s denial weeks later, he was told at the time about a Jan. 29 memo produced by his trade adviser, Peter Navarro, laying out in striking detail the potential risks of a coronavirus pandemic: as many as half a million deaths and trillions of dollars in economic losses.
    • The health and human services secretary, Alex M. Azar II, directly warned Mr. Trump of the possibility of a pandemic during a call on Jan. 30, the second warning he delivered to the president about the virus in two weeks. The president, who was on Air Force One while traveling for appearances in the Midwest, responded that Mr. Azar was being alarmist.
    • Mr. Azar publicly announced in February that the government was establishing a “surveillance” system in five American cities to measure the spread of the virus and enable experts to project the next hot spots. It was delayed for weeks. The slow start of that plan, on top of the well-documented failures to develop the nation’s testing capacity, left administration officials with almost no insight into how rapidly the virus was spreading. “We were flying the plane with no instruments,” one official said.
    • By the third week in February, the administration’s top public health experts concluded they should recommend to Mr. Trump a new approach that would include warning the American people of the risks and urging steps like social distancing and staying home from work. But the White House focused instead on messaging [See the February 26 quotes at the top of the post] and crucial additional weeks went by before their views were reluctantly accepted by the president — time when the virus spread largely unimpeded.

When Mr. Trump finally agreed in mid-March to recommend social distancing across the country, effectively bringing much of the economy to a halt, he seemed shellshocked and deflated to some of his closest associates. One described him as “subdued” and “baffled” by how the crisis had played out. An economy that he had wagered his re-election on was suddenly in shambles.

He only regained his swagger, the associate said, from conducting his daily White House briefings, at which he often seeks to rewrite the history of the past several months. He declared at one point that he “felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic,” and insisted at another that he had to be a “cheerleader for the country,” as if that explained why he failed to prepare the public for what was coming.

You should read this deep-dive analysis. In addition, The Times provides additional reporting, Five Takeaways on What Trump Knew as the Virus Spread, and The ‘Red Dawn’ Emails: 8 Key Exchanges on the Faltering Response to the Coronavirus.

The Times David Leonhardt adds today, Trump’s Role in the Death Toll (excerpt):

[O]ne of the reasons for the large toll in the United States is clearly President Trump. Over the weekend, The Times published a long story documenting the many warnings that he received throughout late January, February and much of March, about the likely severity of the virus and the need to take action.

He rejected those warnings, again and again. He chose a path of denial, rather than a path of aggressive response, as South Korea did.

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Each time, Trump’s response was a version of “stop panicking,” as The Times story explains.

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Hundreds more Americans are likely to die of the virus again today. For that, the president bears substantial blame.

There is increasing media chatter about the Trump administration wanting to “reopen” the country for business in May, despite the lack of aggressive testing and a shortage of testing supplies to ensure that the coronavirus has been contained.

China did an aggressive quarantine of its citizens and widespread testing and tracing for the coronavirus. China recently started slowly reopening its economy, and already China’s new coronavirus cases rise to near six-week high: “China reported the highest number of new daily coronavirus cases in nearly six weeks, driven by a rise in infected travellers arriving from overseas and underscoring challenges Beijing faces in preventing a second wave of COVID-19.”

CNBC reports, New US projections show summer coronavirus infection spike if restrictions are lifted, report says:

New U.S. government figures show coronavirus infections will spike during the summer if stay-at-home orders are lifted after 30 days as planned, the New York Times reported on Friday.

If President Donald Trump lifts shelter-in-place orders after 30 days, the death total is estimated to reach 200,000, the New York Times reported, citing new projections it obtained from the departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services.

The April 9 projections did not have dates for when shelter-in-place orders were delivered or dates for when spikes would hit, the newspaper said.

The projections outline different scenarios. Without any restrictions imposed to contain coronavirus – including school closings, shelter-in-place orders and social distancing, the death toll from coronavirus could have reached 300,000, it said.

But if the 30-day stay-at-home order is lifted, the death total is estimated to reach 200,000, the Times said, “even if schools remain closed until summer, 25 percent of the country continues to work from home and some social distancing continues.”

Donald Trump was willing to let the coronavirus “wash over” the United States at the cost of hundreds of thousands of American lives in a foolish attempt to achieve herd immunity. How many thousands of American lives is he now willing to sacrifice to reopen the country for business because his reelection campaign was built upon the performance of the U.S. economy, which is now at depression-level unemployment? No one should trust the instincts or judgment of this sociopath. He is as dangerous to America lives as is the coronavirus.