On This Day In 2020
A "novel coronavirus" arrives from China to test Trump. He downplays it.
OTDI 2020, Trump got his first formal briefing on the virus that was spreading from China. The following week, his advisor Peter Navarro told him Covid could take half a million lives and cost up to $6 trillion in damages. Navarro later upped the death estimate to an unfortunately more-accurate 1 million+.
So how did Trump respond? In public he purposefully hid Covid’s significance. Later he claimed he knew the virus was “deadly stuff,” but he wanted “to play it down.” He did not want to appear weak; yet again, Trump's personality flaws seem to have influenced his policy, leading to bad outcomes for Americans. “We want to show confidence. We have to show strength," Trump told Bob Woodward.
As the New York Times later summarized: “An examination reveals the president was warned about the potential for a pandemic but that internal divisions, lack of planning and his faith in his own instincts led to a halting response.” (Our May 9th OTDI will answer why there was a “lack of planning.”)
Once Trump realized that Covid threatened his re-election, he changed his tune. As the NYT recounted: “When he 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.”
His inappropriate reaction may have contributed to the miserable Covid outcomes the US experienced vs other comparable nations.
Axios has the story on Trump’s first coronavirus briefing: https://www.axios.com/trump-coronavirus-warnings-46ea8006-2e19-4810-82c1-0f10f4f9aa97.html
@jonathanvswan and @margarettalev at Axios have more on Navarro: https://www.axios.com/2020/04/07/exclusive-navarro-deaths-coronavirus-memos-january
@EricLiptonNYT, @SangerNYT, @maggieNYT, @shearm, @MarkMazzettiNYT, and @julianbarnes have an extensive report in The New York Times on Trump’s early Covid mistakes: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/us/politics/coronavirus-trump-response.html
A "novel coronavirus" arrives from China to test Trump. He downplays it.