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This Is Trump’s Fault
The president is failing, and Americans are paying for his failures.

APRIL 7, 2020

David Frum
Staff writer at The Atlantic

“Idon’t take responsibility at all,” said President Donald Trump in the Rose Garden on March 13. Those words will probably end up as the epitaph of his presidency, the single sentence that sums it all up.

Trump now fancies himself a “wartime president.” How is his war going? By the end of March, the coronavirus had killed more Americans than the 9/11 attacks. By the first weekend in April, the virus had killed more Americans than any single battle of the Civil War. By Easter, it may have killed more Americans than the Korean War. On the present trajectory, it will kill, by late April, more Americans than Vietnam. Having earlier promised that casualties could be held near zero, Trump now claims he will have done a “very good job” if the toll is held below 200,000 dead.

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The United States is on trajectory to suffer more sickness, more dying, and more economic harm from this virus than any other comparably developed country.

Read: How the pandemic will end

That the pandemic occurred is not Trump’s fault. The utter unpreparedness of the United States for a pandemic is Trump’s fault. The loss of stockpiled respirators to breakage because the federal government let maintenance contracts lapse in 2018 is Trump’s fault. The failure to store sufficient protective medical gear in the national arsenal is Trump’s fault. That states are bidding against other states for equipment, paying many multiples of the precrisis price for ventilators, is Trump’s fault. Air travelers summoned home and forced to stand for hours in dense airport crowds alongside infected people? That was Trump’s fault too. Ten weeks of insisting that the coronavirus is a harmless flu that would miraculously go away on its own? Trump’s fault again. The refusal of red-state governors to act promptly, the failure to close Florida and Gulf Coast beaches until late March? That fault is more widely shared, but again, responsibility rests with Trump: He could have stopped it, and he did not.


The lying about the coronavirus by hosts on Fox News and conservative talk radio is Trump’s fault: They did it to protect him. The false hope of instant cures and nonexistent vaccines is Trump’s fault, because he told those lies to cover up his failure to act in time. The severity of the economic crisis is Trump’s fault; things would have been less bad if he had acted faster instead of sending out his chief economic adviser and his son Eric to assure Americans that the first stock-market dips were buying opportunities. The firing of a Navy captain for speaking truthfully about the virus’s threat to his crew? Trump’s fault. The fact that so many key government jobs were either empty or filled by mediocrities? Trump’s fault. The insertion of Trump’s arrogant and incompetent son-in-law as commander in chief of the national medical supply chain? Trump’s fault.

For three years, Trump has blathered and bluffed and bullied his way through an office for which he is utterly inadequate. But sooner or later, every president must face a supreme test, a test that cannot be evaded by blather and bluff and bullying. That test has overwhelmed Trump.

Trump failed. He is failing. He will continue to fail. And Americans are paying for his failures.

The coronavirus emerged in China in late December. The Trump administration received its first formal notification of the outbreak on January 3. The first confirmed case in the United States was diagnosed in mid-January. Financial markets in the United States suffered the first of a sequence of crashes on February 24. The first person known to have succumbed to COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, in the United States died on February 29. The 100th died on March 17. By March 20, New York City alone had confirmed 5,600 cases. Not until March 21—the day the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services placed its first large-scale order for N95 masks—did the White House begin marshaling a national supply chain to meet the threat in earnest. “What they’ve done over the last 13 days has been really extraordinary,” Jared Kushner said on April 3, implicitly acknowledging the waste of weeks between January 3 and March 21.

Peter Wehner: The Trump presidency is over

Those were the weeks when testing hardly happened, because there were no kits. Those were the weeks when tracing hardly happened, because there was little testing. Those were the weeks when isolation did not happen, because the president and his administration insisted that the virus was under control. Those were the weeks when supplies were not ordered, because nobody in the White House was home to order them. Those lost weeks placed the United States on the path to the worst outbreak of the coronavirus in the developed world: one-fourth of all confirmed cases anywhere on Earth.



Those lost weeks also put the United States—and thus the world—on the path to an economic collapse steeper than any in recent memory. Statisticians cannot count fast enough to keep pace with the accelerating economic depression. It’s a good guess that the unemployment rate had reached 13 percent by April 3. It may peak at 20 percent, perhaps even higher, and threatens to stay at Great Depression–like levels at least into 2021, maybe longer.

This country—buffered by oceans from the epicenter of the global outbreak, in East Asia; blessed with the most advanced medical technology on Earth; endowed with agencies and personnel devoted to responding to pandemics—could have and should have suffered less than nations nearer to China. Instead, the United States will suffer more than any peer country.

It didn’t have to be this way. If somebody else had been president of the United States in December 2019—Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Mike Pence, really almost anybody else—the United States would still have been afflicted by the coronavirus. But it would have been better prepared, and better able to respond.Through the early weeks of the pandemic, when so much death and suffering could still have been prevented or mitigated, Trump joined passivity to fantasy. In those crucial early days, Trump made two big wagers. He bet that the virus could somehow be prevented from entering the United States by travel restrictions. And he bet that, to the extent that the virus had already entered the United States, it would burn off as the weather warmed.

At a session with state governors on February 10, Trump predicted that the virus would quickly disappear on its own. “Now, the virus that we’re talking about having to do—you know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat—as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April. We’re in great shape though. We have 12 cases—11 cases, and many of them are in good shape now.” On February 14, Trump repeated his assurance that the virus would disappear by itself. He tweeted again on February 24 that he had the virus “very much under control in the USA.” On February 27, he said that the virus would disappear “like a miracle.”

Those two assumptions led him to conclude that not much else needed to be done. Senator Chris Murphy left a White House briefing on February 5, and tweeted:

Just left the Administration briefing on Coronavirus. Bottom line: they aren’t taking this seriously enough. Notably, no request for ANY emergency funding, which is a big mistake. Local health systems need supplies, training, screening staff etc. And they need it now.

Trump and his supporters now say that he was distracted from responding to the crisis by his impeachment. Even if it were true, pleading that the defense of your past egregious misconduct led to your present gross failures is not much of an excuse.



But if Trump and his senior national-security aides were distracted, impeachment was not the only reason, or even the principal reason. The period when the virus gathered momentum in Hubei province was also the period during which the United States seemed on the brink of war with Iran. Through the fall of 2019, tensions escalated between the two countries. The United States blamed an Iranian-linked militia for a December 27 rocket attack on a U.S. base in Iraq, triggering tit-for-tat retaliation that would lead to the U.S. killing General Qassem Soleimani on January 3, open threats of war by the United States on January 6, and the destruction of a civilian airliner over Tehran on January 8.

The preoccupation with Iran may account for why Trump paid so little attention to the virus, despite the many warnings. On January 18, Trump—on a golf excursion in Palm Beach, Florida—cut off his health secretary’s telephoned warning of gathering danger to launch into a lecture about vaping, The Washington Post reported.

Two days later, the first documented U.S. case was confirmed in Washington State.

Yet even at that late hour, Trump continued to think of the coronavirus as something external to the United States. He tweeted on January 22: “China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”

David Frum: No empathy, only anger

Impeachment somehow failed to distract Trump from traveling to Davos, where in a January 22 interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box, he promised: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”

Trump would later complain that he had been deceived by the Chinese. “I wish they could have told us earlier about what was going on inside,” he said on March 21. “We didn’t know about it until it started coming out publicly.”

If Trump truly was so trustingly ignorant as late as January 22, the fault was again his own. The Trump administration had cut U.S. public-health staff operating inside China by two-thirds, from 47 in January 2017 to 14 by 2019, an important reason it found itself dependent on less-accurate information from the World Health Organization. In July 2019, the Trump administration defunded the position that embedded an epidemiologist inside China’s own disease-control administration, again obstructing the flow of information to the United States.

Yet even if Trump did not know what was happening, other Americans did. On January 27, former Vice President Joe Biden sounded the alarm about a global pandemic in an op-ed in USA Today. By the end of January, eight cases of the virus had been confirmed in the United States. Hundreds more must have been incubating undetected.



On January 31, the Trump administration at last did something: It announced restrictions on air travel to and from China by non-U.S. persons. This January 31 decision to restrict air travel has become Trump’s most commonly proffered defense of his actions. “We’ve done an incredible job because we closed early,” Trump said on February 27. “We closed those borders very early, against the advice of a lot of professionals, and we turned out to be right. I took a lot of heat for that,” he repeated on March 4. Trump praised himself some more at a Fox News town hall in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the next day. “As soon as I heard that China had a problem, I said, ‘What’s going on with China? How many people are coming in?’ Nobody but me asked that question. And you know better than—again, you know … that I closed the borders very early.”

Because Trump puts so much emphasis on this point, it’s important to stress that none of this is true. Trump did not close the borders early—in fact, he did not truly close them at all.

The World Health Organization declared a global health emergency on January 30, but recommended against travel restrictions. On January 31, the same day the United States announced its restrictions, Italy suspended all flights to and from China. But unlike the American restrictions, which did not take effect until February 2, the Italian ban applied immediately. Australia acted on February 1, halting entries from China by foreign nationals, again ahead of Trump.

And Trump’s actions did little to stop the spread of the virus. The ban applied only to foreign nationals who had been in China during the previous 14 days, and included 11 categories of exceptions. Since the restrictions took effect, nearly 40,000 passengers have entered the United States from China, subjected to inconsistent screenings, The New York Times reported.

At a House hearing on February 5, a few days after the restrictions went into effect, Ron Klain—who led the Obama administration’s efforts against the Ebola outbreak—condemned the Trump policy as a “travel Band-Aid, not a travel ban.”

That same afternoon, Trump’s impeachment trial ended with his acquittal in the Senate. The president, though, turned his energy not to combatting the virus, but to the demands of his own ego.

The president’s top priority through February 2020 was to exact retribution from truth-tellers in the impeachment fight. On February 7, Trump removed Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman from the National Security Council. On February 12, Trump withdrew his nomination of Jessie Liu as undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial crimes, apparently to punish her for her role in the prosecution and conviction of the Trump ally Roger Stone. On March 2, Trump withdrew the nomination of Elaine McCusker to the post of Pentagon comptroller; McCusker’s sin was having raised concerns that suspension of aid to Ukraine had been improper. Late on the evening of April 3, Trump fired Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, the official who had forwarded the Ukraine whistleblower complaint to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, as the law required. As the epigrammist Windsor Mann tweeted that same night: “Trump’s impeachment distracted him from preparing for a pandemic, but the pandemic did not distract him from firing the man he holds responsible for his impeachment.”



Read: The pandemic will cleave America in two

Intentionally or not, Trump’s campaign of payback against his perceived enemies in the impeachment battle sent a warning to public-health officials: Keep your mouth shut. If anybody missed the message, the firing of Captain Brett Crozier from the command of an aircraft carrier for speaking honestly about the danger facing his sailors was a reminder. There’s a reason that the surgeon general of the United States seems terrified to answer even the most basic factual questions or that Rear Admiral John Polowczyk sounds like a malfunctioning artificial-intelligence program at press briefings. The president’s lies must not be contradicted. And because the president’s lies change constantly, it’s impossible to predict what might contradict him.

“Best usa economy IN HISTORY!” Trump tweeted on February 11. On February 15, Trump shared a video from a Senate GOP account, tweeting: “Our booming economy is drawing Americans off the sidelines and BACK TO WORK at the highest rate in 30 years!”

Denial became the unofficial policy of the administration through the month of February, and as a result, that of the administration’s surrogates and propagandists. “It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump,” Rush Limbaugh said on his radio program February 24. “Now, I want to tell you the truth about the coronavirus … Yeah, I’m dead right on this. The coronavirus is the common cold, folks.”

Read: Why does the president keep pushing a malaria drug?

“We have contained this,” Trump’s economic adviser Larry Kudlow told CNBC on February 24. “I won’t say airtight, but pretty close to airtight. We have done a good job in the United States.” Kudlow conceded that there might be “some stumbles” in financial markets, but insisted there would be no “economic tragedy.”

On February 28, then–White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney told an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference, near Washington, D.C.:

The reason you’re ... seeing so much attention to [the virus] today is that [the media] think this is gonna be what brings down this president. This is what this is all about. I got a note from a reporter saying, “What are you gonna do today to calm the markets.” I’m like: Really, what I might do today to calm the markets is tell people to turn their televisions off for 24 hours ... This is not Ebola, okay? It’s not SARS, it’s not MERS.

That same day, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo scolded a House committee for daring to ask him about the coronavirus. “We agreed that I’d come today to talk about Iran, and the first question today is not about Iran.”

Throughout the crisis, the top priority of the president, and of everyone who works for the president, has been the protection of his ego. Americans have become sadly used to Trump’s blustery self-praise and his insatiable appetite for flattery. During the pandemic, this psychological deformity has mutated into a deadly strategic vulnerability for the United States.



Read: The four possible timelines for life returning to normal

“If we were doing a bad job, we should also be criticized. But we have done an incredible job,” Trump said on February 27. “We’re doing a great job with it,” he told Republican senators on March 10. “I always treated the Chinese Virus very seriously, and have done a very good job from the beginning,” he tweeted on March 18.

For three-quarters of his presidency, Trump has taken credit for the economic expansion that began under President Barack Obama in 2010. That expansion accelerated in 2014, just in time to deliver real prosperity over the past three years. The harm done by Trump’s own initiatives, and especially his trade wars, was masked by that continued growth. The economy Trump inherited became his all-purpose answer to his critics. Did he break laws, corrupt the Treasury, appoint cronies, and tell lies? So what? Unemployment was down, the stock market up.

Suddenly, in 2020, the rooster that had taken credit for the sunrise faced the reality of sunset. He could not bear it.

Underneath all the denial and self-congratulation, Trump seems to have glimpsed the truth. The clearest statement of that knowledge was expressed on February 28. That day, Trump spoke at a rally in South Carolina—his penultimate rally before the pandemic forced him to stop. This was the rally at which Trump accused the Democrats of politicizing the coronavirus as “their new hoax.” That line was so shocking, it has crowded out awareness of everything else Trump said that day. Yet those other statements are, if possible, even more relevant to understanding the trouble he brought upon the country.

Read: The two states where Trump’s COVID-19 response could backfire

Trump does not speak clearly. His patterns of speech betray a man with guilty secrets to hide, and a beclouded mind. Yet we can discern, through the mental fog, that Trump had absorbed some crucial facts. By February 28, somebody in his orbit seemed to already be projecting 35,000 to 40,000 deaths from the coronavirus. Trump remembered the number, but refused to believe it. His remarks are worth revisiting at length:

Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus, you know that, right? Coronavirus, they’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say, “How’s President Trump doing?” They go, “Oh, not good, not good.” They have no clue. They don’t have any clue. They can’t even count their votes in Iowa. They can’t even count. No, they can’t. They can’t count their votes.

One of my people came up to me and said, “Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia.” That didn’t work out too well. They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything. They tried it over and over. They’d been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning. They lost. It’s all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax.

But we did something that’s been pretty amazing. We have 15 people in this massive country, and because of the fact that we went early. We went early; we could have had a lot more than that. We’re doing great. Our country is doing so great. We are so unified. We are so unified. The Republican Party has never ever been unified like it is now. There has never been a movement in the history of our country like we have now. Never been a movement.

So a statistic that we want to talk about—Go ahead: Say USA. It’s okay; USA. So a number that nobody heard of, that I heard of recently and I was shocked to hear it: 35,000 people on average die each year from the flu. Did anyone know that? Thirty-five thousand, that’s a lot of people. It could go to 100,000; it could be 27,000. They say usually a minimum of 27, goes up to 100,000 people a year die.

And so far, we have lost nobody to coronavirus in the United States. Nobody. And it doesn’t mean we won’t and we are totally prepared. It doesn’t mean we won’t, but think of it. You hear 35 and 40,000 people and we’ve lost nobody and you wonder, the press is in hysteria mode.

On February 28, very few Americans had heard of an estimated death toll of 35,000 to 40,000, but Trump had heard it. And his answer to that estimate was: “So far, we have lost nobody.” He conceded, “It doesn’t mean we won’t.” But he returned to his happy talk. “We are totally prepared.” And as always, it was the media's fault. “You hear 35 and 40,000 people and we’ve lost nobody and you wonder, the press is in hysteria mode.”



By February 28, it was too late to exclude the coronavirus from the United States. It was too late to test and trace, to isolate the first cases and halt their further spread—that opportunity had already been lost. It was too late to refill the stockpiles that the Republican Congresses of the Tea Party years had refused to replenish, despite frantic pleas from the Obama administration. It was too late to produce sufficient ventilators in sufficient time.

But on February 28, it was still not too late to arrange an orderly distribution of medical supplies to the states, not too late to coordinate with U.S. allies, not too late to close the Florida beaches before spring break, not too late to bring passengers home from cruise lines, not too late to ensure that state unemployment-insurance offices were staffed and ready, not too late for local governments to get funds to food banks, not too late to begin social distancing fast and early. Stay-at-home orders could have been put into effect on March 1, not in late March and early April.

Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes: Trump’s allies know he has failed

So much time had been wasted by the end of February. So many opportunities had been squandered. But even then, the shock could have been limited. Instead, Trump and his inner circle plunged deeper into two weeks of lies and denial, both about the disease and about the economy.

On February 28, Eric Trump urged Americans to go “all in” on the weakening stock market.

Kudlow repeated his advice that it was a good time to buy stocks on CNBC on March 6 after another bad week for the financial markets. As late as March 9, Trump was still arguing that the coronavirus would be no worse than the seasonal flu.

So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!

But the facade of denial was already cracking.

Through early march, financial markets declined and then crashed. Schools closed, then whole cities, and then whole states. The overwhelmed president responded by doing what comes most naturally to him at moments of trouble: He shifted the blame to others.

The lack of testing equipment? On March 13, Trump passed that buck to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Obama administration.

Read: Why we’re running out of masks

The White House had dissolved the directorate of the National Security Council responsible for planning for and responding to pandemics? Not me, Trump said on March 13. Maybe somebody else in the administration did it, but “I didn’t do it ... I don’t know anything about it. You say we did that. I don’t know anything about it.”

Were ventilators desperately scarce? Obtaining medical equipment was the governors’ job, Trump said on a March 16 conference call.



Did Trump delay action until it was far too late? That was the fault of the Chinese government for withholding information, he complained on March 21.

On March 27, Trump attributed his own broken promises about ventilator production to General Motors, now headed by a woman unworthy of even a last name: “Always a mess with Mary B.”

Masks, gowns, and gloves were running short only because hospital staff were stealing them, Trump suggested on March 29.

Was the national emergency medical stockpile catastrophically depleted? Trump’s campaign creatively tried to pin that on mistakes Joe Biden made back in 2009.

At his press conference on April 2, Trump blamed the shortage of lifesaving equipment, and the ensuing panic-buying, on states’ failure to build their own separate stockpile. “They have to work that out. What they should do is they should’ve—long before this pandemic arrived—they should’ve been on the open market just buying. There was no competition; you could have made a great price. The states have to stock up. It’s like one of those things. They waited. They didn’t want to spend the money, because they thought this would never happen.”

Were New Yorkers dying? On April 2, Trump fired off a peevish letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer: “If you spent less time on your ridiculous impeachment hoax, which went haplessly on forever and ended up going nowhere (except increasing my poll numbers), and instead focused on helping the people of New York, then New York would not have been so completely unprepared for the ‘invisible enemy.’”

Fred Milgrim: A New York doctor’s warning

Trump’s instinct to dodge and blame had devastating consequences for Americans. Every governor and mayor who needed the federal government to take action, every science and medical adviser who hoped to prevent Trump from doing something stupid or crazy, had to reckon with Trump’s psychic needs as their single biggest problem.

As his medical advisers sought to dissuade Trump from proceeding with his musing about reopening the country by Easter, April 12, Deborah Birx—the White House’s coronavirus-response coordinator—appeared on the evangelical CBN network to deliver this abject flattery: “[Trump is] so attentive to the scientific literature & the details & the data. I think his ability to analyze & integrate data that comes out of his long history in business has really been a real benefit.”

Governors got the message too. “If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call,” Trump explained at a White House press briefing on March 27. The federal response has been dogged by suspicions of favoritism for political and personal allies of Trump. The District of Columbia has seen its requests denied, while Florida gets everything it asks for.

The weeks of Trump-administration denial and delay have triggered a desperate scramble among states. The Trump administration is allocating some supplies through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but has made the deliberate choice to allow large volumes of crucial supplies to continue to be distributed by commercial firms to their clients. That has left state governments bidding against one another, as if the 1787 Constitution had never been signed, and we have no national government.



Mehrsa Baradaran: The U.S. should just send checks—but won’t

In his panic, Trump is sacrificing U.S. alliances abroad, attempting to recoup his own failure by turning predator. German and French officials accuse the Trump administration of diverting supplies they had purchased to the United States. On April 3, the North American company 3M publicly rebuked the Trump administration for its attempt to embargo medical exports to Canada, where 3M has operated seven facilities for 70 years.

Around the world, allies are registering that in an emergency, when it matters most, the United States has utterly failed to lead. Perhaps the only political leader in Canada ever to say a good word about Donald Trump, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, expressed disgust at an April 3 press conference. “I just can’t stress how disappointed I am at President Trump ... I’m not going to rely on President Trump,” he said. “I’m not going to rely on any prime minister or president from any country ever again.” Ford argued for a future of Canadian self-sufficiency. Trump’s nationalist selfishness is proving almost as contagious as the virus itself—and could ultimately prove as dangerous, too.

As the pandemic kills, as the economic depression tightens its grip, Donald Trump has consistently put his own needs first. Right now, when his only care should be to beat the pandemic, Trump is renegotiating his debts with his bankers and lease payments with Palm Beach County.

Kori Schake: The imperial presidency comes to a sudden halt

He has never tried to be president of the whole United States, but at most 46 percent of it, to the extent that serving even the 46 percent has been consistent with his supreme concerns: stealing, loafing, and whining. Now he is not even serving the 46 percent. The people most victimized by his lies and fantasies are the people who trusted him, the more conservative Americans who harmed themselves to prove their loyalty to Trump. An Arkansas pastor told The Washington Post of congregants “ready to lick the floor” to support the president’s claim that there is nothing to worry about. On March 15, the Trump-loyal governor of Oklahoma tweeted a since-deleted photo of himself and his children at a crowded restaurant buffet. “Eating with my kids and all my fellow Oklahomans at the @CollectiveOKC. It’s packed tonight!” Those who took their cues from Trump and the media who propagandized for him, and all Americans, will suffer for it.

Governments often fail. From Pearl Harbor to the financial crisis of 2008, you can itemize a long list of missed warnings and overlooked dangers that cost lives and inflicted hardship. But in the past, Americans could at least expect public spirit and civic concern from their presidents.

Trump has mouthed the slogan “America first,” but he has never acted on it. It has always been “Trump first.” His business first. His excuses first. His pathetic vanity first.



Trump has taken millions in payments from the Treasury. He has taken millions in payments from U.S. businesses and foreign governments. He has taken millions in payments from the Republican Party and his own inaugural committee. He has taken so much that does not belong to him, that was unethical and even illegal for him to take. But responsibility? No, he will not take that.

Yet responsibility falls upon Trump, whether he takes it or not. No matter how much he deflects and insults and snivels and whines, this American catastrophe is on his hands and on his head.

This is why nothing he says can actually be trusted....

A couple things about trumps handling of things. First they decided to have Pence make all communications and press conferences. Because they knew trump would not be good at it. They realized this was too big to hand off to the VP.

Then at every press conference there was a format. Compliment the president say what you need to say then compliment the president again.

There was a press conference where Pence was asked a question he rambled on and never answered the question. trump got up after him and said it was the best answer he ever heard because he said nothing. This is not a time for BS political answers that dont say anything. The fact that trump was smiling and complimenting him was absolutely disgusting. This is a time that people need facts and a path of action needs to be defined.

Trump leader style is to spew lies and hate then let other people figure things out and take credit when he can and never take any blame or responsibility.

He is a disgusting human being. It was obvious when he came into office his first priority was to undo anything he could that Obama had accomplished. I am sure closing down the white house pandemic office was directed by trump as part of wiping out anything Obama had done. The fact that he denies knowing how it was closed is proof of his horrible leadership. You are the president it was a white house office that was dismantled during your administration you should know how and why it was shut down. He is either a horrible leader on this point or a liar take your pick there is no other answer.

trumps lack of leadership has killed US citizens

j/c:

REVEALED: U.S. government gave $3.7million grant to Wuhan lab at center of coronavirus leak scrutiny that was performing experiments on bats from the caves where the disease is believed to have originated

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...s.html#comments

Did you even know that the World Health Organization existed before it became the target of President Braggadocios deflection strategy?

And why would Donald J Braggadocios even listen to a 2 bit do good bunch of sissies who try to improve health in those [censored] hole countries.

Ya i did menZa ...

U a fan of the WHO ... u think they did a good job ... if so, i feel even more sorry for u ...

My life and all my thoughts don’t revolve around our President ... never have, never will regardless of who our president is .. its just butt hurt menZas like u that get upset every time he takes a breath and whose entire worlds hinge on his next word so u can slice and dice and dissect it to make him look as bad as possible ...

Great way to spend 4 years ... congrats as your now sticking up for the WHO in this over Mr. President ...

j/c

There have been posts that it was the fault of the WHO that Trump didn't know about or take the virus seriously. I agree that the WHO should have spoken out stronger and sooner. But let's actually look at the timeline showing when Trump did know and how long it took him to actually take action to ramp up for the virus.

Jan. 22

"We do have a plan and we think it's gonna be handled very well, we've already handled it very well. — President Trump to CBS News White House correspondent Paula Reid in Davos, Switzerland.

Jan. 22: 1 case confirmed in U.S.

"We have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It's going to be just fine." CNBC interview in Davos, Switzerland

Jan. 24: 2 cases confirmed in U.S.

President Trump issues his first tweet on coronavirus. "China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!"

Yet we all know he later lambasted Chine for not being transparent.

Jan. 29: 5 cases confirmed in U.S.

"Just received a briefing on the Coronavirus in China from all of our GREAT agencies, who are also working closely with China. We will continue to monitor the ongoing developments. We have the best experts anywhere in the world, and they are on top of it 24/7!" the president tweeted.

Jan. 30: 7 cases confirmed in U.S.

On this day, the World Health Organization declares coronavirus a public-health emergency. "We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment — five — and those people are all recuperating successfully. But we're working very closely with China and other countries, and we think it's going to have a very good ending for us … that I can assure you," Mr. Trump said at a speech at a Michigan manufacturing plant.

Jan. 31: 8 cases confirmed in U.S.

President Trump bars many travelers from China, and U.S. declares a public health emergency.

Not a "travel ban" which he proclaims.

Feb. 5: 11 cases confirmed in U.S.

President Trump is acquitted after impeachment trial in the Senate.

So you mean it was long AFTER the impeachment was over before Trump took any real action" So much for that excuse.

Feb. 7: 11 confirmed cases in U.S.

"Just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. He feels they are doing very well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days. Nothing is easy, but......he will be successful, especially as the weather starts to warm & the virus hopefully becomes weaker, and then gone. Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help!" the president tweeted.

Feb. 10: 12 confirmed cases in U.S.

"I had a long talk with President Xi — for the people in this room — two nights ago, and he feels very confident. He feels very confident. And he feels that, again, as I mentioned, by April or during the month of April, the heat, generally speaking, kills this kind of virus," the president said during a White House meeting with governors.

Feb. 23: 51 confirmed cases in U.S.

"We're very much involved. We're very — very cognizant of everything going on. We have it very much under control in this country," the president told reporters, in response to a question about whether he had been updated on the coronavirus.

Feb. 24: 51 confirmed cases in U.S.

"The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!" the president tweeted.

Feb. 25: 57 confirmed cases in U.S.

"You may ask about the coronavirus, which is very well under control in our country. We have very few people with it, and the people that have it are - in all cases, I have not heard anything other," the president said during a press conference on his trip to India.

Feb. 26: 58 confirmed cases in U.S.

"I want you to understand something that shocked me when I saw it that — and I spoke with Dr. Fauci on this, and I was really amazed, and I think most people are amazed to hear it: The flu, in our country, kills from 25,000 people to 69,000 people a year. That was shocking to me. And, so far, if you look at what we have with the 15 people and their recovery, one is — one is pretty sick but hopefully will recover, but the others are in great shape. But think of that: 25,000 to 69,000. ... "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," the president said during a Coronavirus Task Force Press briefing at the White House.

I have no idea how 58 confirmed cases turned into 15 cases. But like diam says, math is hard.

Feb. 27: 60 confirmed cases in U.S.

"It's going to disappear. One day it's like a miracle, it will disappear," the president said during a White House meeting with African-American leaders.

Feb. 29: 74 confirmed cases in U.S.

"And we've done a great job. And I've gotten to know these professionals. They're incredible. And everything is under control. I mean, they're very, very cool. They've done it, and they've done it well. Everything is really under control." — Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland. One attendee from that event later tested positive, and lawmakers who attended went under self-quarantine.

Feb. 29: 74 confirmed cases in U.S.

"We've taken the most aggressive actions to confront the coronavirus. They are the most aggressive taken by any country and we're the number one travel destination anywhere in the world, yet we have far fewer cases of the disease then even countries with much less travel or a much smaller population." —White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing

March 4: 217 confirmed cases in U.S.

"Yeah, I think where these people are flying, it's safe to fly. And large portions of the world are very safe to fly. So we don't want to say anything other than that. And we have closed down certain sections of the world, frankly, and they've sort of automatically closed them also. They'll understand that and they understand it better, perhaps, than anybody. Yes, it's safe." — White House meeting with airline executives.

March 6: 402 confirmed cases in U.S.

"Anybody that wants a test can get a test. ... The tests are all perfect, like the letter was perfect, the transcription was perfect, right?" — CDC headquarters in Atlanta

We all know this was a lie.

March 9: 959 confirmed cases in U.S.

"So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!" the president tweeted.

There he goes with that math problem again.

March 10: 1,300 confirmed cases in U.S.

"Well, this was unexpected. This was something that came out of China, and it hit us and many other countries. You look at the numbers; I see the numbers with just by watching you folks. I see it — it's over 100 different countries. And it hit the world. And we're prepared, and we're doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away," the president said on Capitol Hill after meeting with Republican senators.

March 11: 1,700 confirmed cases in U.S.

"To keep new cases from entering our shores, we will be suspending all travel from Europe to the United States for the next 30 days. The new rules will go into effect Friday at midnight. These restrictions will be adjusted subject to conditions on the ground." — Televised Oval Office address to the nation.

March 12: 2,200 confirmed cases in U.S.

"I mean, think of it: The United States, because of what I did and what the administration did with China, we have 32 deaths at this point. Other countries that are smaller countries have many, many deaths. Thirty-two is a lot. Thirty-two is too many. But when you look at the kind of numbers that you're seeing coming out of other countries, it's pretty amazing when you think of it. So, that's it." — Trump meeting with Irish prime minister at White House.

March 13: 2,700 confirmed cases in U.S.

"We have 40 people right now. Forty. Compare that with other countries that have many, many times that amount. And one of the reasons we have 40 and others have — and, again, that number is going up, just so you understand. And a number of cases, which are very small, relatively speaking — it's going up. But we've done a great job because we acted quickly. We acted early. And there's nothing we could have done that was better than closing our borders to highly infected areas." — Rose Garden press conference.

March 16: 6,400 confirmed cases in U.S.

"I've spoken actually with my son. He says, 'How bad is this?' It's bad. It's bad. But we're going to — we're going to be, hopefully, a best case, not a worst case. And that's what we're working for."

"They think August, it could be July," he said at a press briefing Monday, referring to members of the White House task force. "Could be longer than that."— White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing.

Think about this. The first case of coronavirus was confirmed in the U. D. on January 20th. Every expert on the virus knows that staying in place and social distancing is they key to slowing down this virus. Yet it took Trump almost two months to issue social distancing.

March 24: 65,800 confirmed cases in U.S.

"I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter," the president said of easing social distancing guidelines in parts of the country."
"I think Easter Sunday — you'll have packed churches all over our country." — Fox News town hall.

[i] The only people packed in churches today are idiots.]/i]

March 24: 65,800 confirmed cases in U.S.

"There is tremendous hope as we look forward and we begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel." — White House Coronavirus Task Force Press briefing.

March 29: 161,800 confirmed cases in U.S.

"The better you do, the faster this whole nightmare will end. Therefore, we will be extending our guidelines to April 30th to slow the spread. ... We can expect that, by June 1st, we will be well on our way to recovery. We think, by June 1st, a lot of great things will be happening." — White House Rose Garden press conference.

March 31: 213,400 confirmed cases in U.S.

"This could be a hell of a bad two weeks. This is gonna be a very bad two — or maybe even three — weeks," the president said. "This is going to be three weeks like we haven't seen before." — White House Coronavirus Task Force Briefing.

March 31: 213,400 confirmed cases in U.S.

"But it's not the flu. It's vicious. When you send a friend to the hospital and you call up to find out, how is he doing, it happened to me. Where he goes to the hospital, he says goodbye, sort of a tough guy, little older, little heavier than he'd like to be, frankly. And you call up the next day, 'how's he doing?' And he's in a coma? This is not the flu. — White House Coronavirus Task Force Briefing.

April 3: 273,880 confirmed cases in U.S.

"I said it was going away - and it is going away." — White House Coronavirus Task Force Briefing.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/timeline-president-donald-trump-changing-statements-on-coronavirus/

People really need to stop trying find a scapegoat for the actions of Trump. This is a clear timeline of when he knew the virus was here and how long he actually waited to take any real action.

The WHO is irrelevant as the USA does not follow WHO guidelines because It has its own capabilities that are far in excess of the WHO....

The WHO is insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

Just a scapegoat for Donald J Braggadocios.... because as we know. He is not responsible....

It's everyone's fault with the exception of Trump ... Trump and Diam know this, so stop with your factual diatribe.

March 6: 402 confirmed cases in U.S.

"Anybody that wants a test can get a test. ... The tests are all perfect, like the letter was perfect, the transcription was perfect, right?" — CDC headquarters in Atlanta"

"You know, my uncle was a great person. He was at MIT. He taught at MIT for, I think, like a record number of years. He was a great super genius. Dr. John Trump. I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors said, 'How do you know so much about this? ' Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president."

Its statements and lies like these that have no place in time of crisis. The worst president ever, he spreads lies and compliment himself when he should have been offering facts and course of action.

He makes me long for republicans as lousy as Bush Jr.

Blaming Trump for this is rich.....

There was not a damn thing he could have done. The FACT is the US did NOT have the necessary equipment, medical protective gear, Ventilators, etc.

We still do not have what we need. This isn't something President Trump could just snap his fingers and in 3 months we would have all this stuff. this something that should have been done YEARS ago...it shoulda been done after H1N1, it should have been done during the Bush and Obama administrations.

there is no way in **** Trump could have done anything different. Even if he ramped up all factories to 100% in Jan we still would not have had enough of what we needed.

You know why Trump was telling everyone "Its a hoax" and "its not a big deal"?

Because Trump knew we were ****** and was trying to prevent a complete panic.

Go ahead though, keep blaming the President....why not right? Gotta have someone to blame despite the fact that all the things needed to prepare this country were bills that needed passed by Congress and a few years for FEMA to institute a proper plan, test the plan, evaluate the plan, and secure the equipment necessary.

but hey! The lying *** News media says the President can just snap his fingers and sign some order and INSTANTLY we would have everything we needed to combat a pandemic in a few months despite the fact such a perfect properly done and handled response would take years to stockpile and prepare the necessary procedures, equipment, training, and everything else that goes along with it.

this is whats wrong with soceity, everyone thinks everything can just happen now.

There isn't anything else the President could have done because the years worth of necessary infastructure to handle this was never implemented, and Trump firing a few suits who claim to be infectious diesease experts doesn't change the fact we didn't have the manpower, equipment, nor planning in place to deal with this.

This isn't Trump's fault,. its the fault and failing of our entire governmental system in the last 25 years...that means its the failings of Busah Sr, Clinton, Bush Jr, Obama, and now very partially on Trump...none of these other past Presidents done their damn job and put together the needed infrastructure and planning to deal with this.

So now were left to pick up the pieces, and hopefully our government finally puts forth the money and time needed to prepare for something like this in the future.

Ummmmm .... these statements don't go well together.

You just highlighted one of the very biggest things Drumf could and should have done differently and it could have saved lives ..... calling it a hoax did not help anything, no way, no how, no when....

j/c

Interesting read, and video. https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/04...19-death-video/

Dr. Birx states that most countries, if someone dies from a kidney issue, or heart issue, and they had covid, they aren't reporting the death as a covid death, rather a kidney death, or heart, etc.

Yet, here in the u.s., if someone with underlying issues dies, but has the virus, the u.s. is reporting it as a covid death. In other words, say you die from a heart attack. You died from a heart attack. Yet, if you had the virus, which millions of us do, with no symptoms, etc.....it's still listed as a covid death. Why?

FUN FACT: Governor DeWine, a republican, is being put on blast on twitter for this lockdown and I clicked through the first ten profiles of posters to see who these people were complaining that the economy is more important than lives... ALL 10 were Trumpians. See for yourself:

https://twitter.com/GovMikeDeWine

Because they are smart enough to realize that a destroyed economy will wreck more lives than the virus.

I hope those smart people get their wish and a chance prove all the science wrong... hopefully sooner rather than later. And then dumb liberals can keep working from home while watching the smart hold my beer crowd get it all figured out.

They need to artificially inflate the numbers.

The science you are relying on hasn't even been proven correct.

Well most people with cancer die from complications like pneumonia or some other infection. Yet we all say they died from cancer...

The liberals to include those here realize it as well. They don't really care because they are counting on exploiting the aftermath. And the aftermath is a potential gold mine to them:

-They're anti-capitalist so of course you don't see them bothered by the millions suddenly unemployed and countless small businesses destroyed. Come election time they'll try to paint this as a failure of the capitalist system even though it doesn't have anything to do with the system.

-They'll use the deaths and anecdotal stories of a lack of equipment to illustrate the "failed" medical system and use that to push for the single, gov't run system all the while conveniently forgetting all these weeks of their criticisms on how the gov't has failed.

They may not be leading an armed insurrection, but body counts and collateral damage are just as acceptable to them, even viewed as necessary as it was to murderous dictators rising to power.

Do we?

Looking forward to 6 months of commercials from the “Devil Don” in his own words.

No sympathy for the devil. He chose the economy over people. His own words will be used over and over again a backdrop of graves.

I know people that have lost family to this virus, and recall that I take no responsibility....

Must be nice to live in your ivory tower. How taking an economy that was doing 70mph down the interstate than dropping the transmission out of it by slamming it in to Park is choosing the economy over people is anyone's guess. 10+ million people unemployed in a span of 2 weeks is choosing the economy over people?

The economy IS people. More lives stand to be ruined by the actions that have been taken so far than had literally nothing been done and we hit that 1-2 million death toll.

There's a lot of people suffering because they're told their suffering mightsave lives. Maybe you guys could be decent enough to spare a little sympathy for them?

You can't use that comparison. The people with cancer died of a complication RESULTING from the cancer, thereby caused by the cancer. We're counting as COVID deaths people that died of serious medical conditions that PRE-EXISTED the COVID. Other countries aren't doing that. That said, we probably don't know how much this is actually skewing the stats, but we should be using the same methods as the others if we want to compare numbers.

I think it is very dangerous to say "other countries are doing this" or "other countries are doing that"

There is a huge breadth of things different countries are doing -- some of which they know are incorrect, but it's the best they can do at the moment.

It won't be until a year after this is all over that epidemiologists have realistic counts that take into account all of these complexities.

You really, really, really need to find some alternative news and information sources. These two comments are "Dennis Kucinich" wacky.

Virtually all of that is Verifiable. Yet, no matter how much you try to pound that into the heads of Trumpians, they deny it.

Not sure how the hell that happens.

. double post

I'm one of the farthest left posters on here and I want nothing to do with an America that is not capitalist. But we believe in different forms of capitalism. I think free markets and unbridled capitalism are dangerous to the country due to those who would do anything in the name of profit including let people die. Greed is a natural component of capitalism and free markets. That greed when regulated by common sense and decency can be a very good thing, but unrestricted greed can get ugly fast.

So unlike your accusation, I want capitalism to succeed and I want people to succeed. Like you say below, "the economy is people", and if you want a truly strong healthy economy then you have to take care of the people at the bottom driving that economy. This is why shifting all the wealth to the top and destroying the middle class is disastrous. Us crazy libs have been warning conservatives that 40% of america couldn't afford to miss one paycheck for a long time and we got responses like they should save more money, or they should pull up those bootstraps blah blah blah... But of course when the crap hits the fan you want to blame us.

And it's not like we weren't warned by science that one day this would come... If we had a strong social safety net this pandemic wouldn't be nearly as detrimental to the economy because the investments made along the way to prepare for the economic impact would have offset much of the damage being done. Wouldn't it be nice if all we had to do was make sure businesses would be able to bounce right back instead of fighting over toilet paper? But stupid is as stupid does and in the name of profits now for the investment class we have cut and cut and cut instead of investing in our social safety net. Our medical system was already a slow motion trainwreck before this, again in the name of profits. Picking and choosing who dies and who gets wiped out is nothing new. The poor, the sick, and the old weren't experiencing a wonderful life before any of this happened. But they were ignored. I think it's funny how some guys suddenly worry about the economy and investments and losing everything ONLY when they are in the crosshairs. But I digress...

Maybe you haven't noticed the stock market bouncing back the last few weeks... On March 23 the DOW hit a low point of 18,591 but today it's back to 23,719... That's your hard earned tax dollars bailing out the 1%. Meanwhile 16+ million newly unemployed are facing financial disaster, again in the name of greed. And countless millions are now without healthcare because we care more about the profits of insurance companies than we do making healthcare a right. Meanwhile the little bit of money the dems secured to bailout small businesses and everyday people is being slowly and methodically drug out to keep us desperate.

So you coming on here and throwing stones at liberals is just pure BS. You vote every damn election to keep the American economy nothing more than a house of cards with voodoo ass trickle down economics and you want to accuse liberals when the cards start falling like rain? GMAB. We have felt sympathy for all these people long before this crisis, but our pleas to fix this broken system have fallen on deaf greedy ears.

I personally don't give a damn about the stock market crashing. As far as I'm concerned it can bottom out... I care about the people losing loved ones, life savings, and small businesses. I care about the people that wonder how they are going to keep a roof over their heads and food in the bellies. I care about the people putting their lives on the line to save our asses right now. I care about the homeless, the elderly in nursing homes and retirement communities, the prisoners, those living in poverty, the minimum wage earners being forced to work through all of this because their lives depend on the paycheck not the patriotism! These are the vulnerable people who have way fewer choices during this pandemic than you or I, they are most at risk of dying which is a little worse than being broke. AND SURE I feel bad for people losing money and the aftermath that is coming but my brand of politics and leadership didn't make this bed we are all laying in, and those that vote like you were well warned.

At the end of the day, going back to work too early and causing this thing to spread, even if it only doubles the death tolls is not worth the economic gains the average person will receive... Think of it like this, which person in your immediate circle of friends and family would you happily sacrifice to go back to work a month faster? Which 2,3, or 4 people? I hope you answered none.

Donald Trump and his rich buddies are going to be rich when the economy returns. They are not going to miss a meal, not have the money to pay a bill, or worry about healthcare. And at no time will they be asked or forced to risk their lives for a little paycheck. So why in the hell would you let them risk your life over money against the advice of experts that have studied these things for their entire lives? If the rich can be bailed out the way we are seeing, the poor can too. The government can print all the money it needs to print when it wants to do it. But our current oligarchic corporatist government doesn't give a damn about people like you or me. Why should you care about them?

Changes are coming and if any good is to come of this crisis, it will be when people like you and me get on the same page for what the future should look like for us and ours. I bet we are a lot closer than you think.

And before the wailing starts, of course I don't want the little people with money in the stock market to lose everything. But they also had the choice not to take that risk. Just like the video clips I posted stated, 85% of all stocks are owned by the mega rich. Screw bailing them out before everyday people, that's what pisses me off.

I see what you are saying, but with the (I think intentional) lack of testing, none of the numbers are accurate and all are probably much larger. As for the heart conditions, we have already been told that COPD, heart disease, and diabetes are the underlying conditions that this virus hits the hardest. So if you want to call it death by heart disease with the 'complication' of COVID-19, I don't see much difference. The only difference is we are not testing for verification because the numbers would make those in charge look bad before the election... I mean if south korea can test everybody, I don't see why we can't.

No sympathy for the very stable genius... who is perhaps the least empathetic person in the world.

Just a too bad to be you, you spoke the words that you will have to re-live time and time again....

Money is greater than people dying. God will remember that.

Firstly I am going to repeat that "we don't know" .... there isn't enough testing anywhere on the planet to know.... and if different countries are following different procedures at the moment, at some point hopefully there will be standardization as that helps fill in the big picture in the most accurate way.

As for cause of death? If someone has COPD (my mum had it for 6 or 7 years before her recent death) .... and they die because they caught Covid-19 and would otherwise have been alive, then I think it's correct to say they died of Covid-19.

Hell - I am dying/will die of old age - if I catch a deadly disease when I am old and frail and have a comprised immune system ... I didn't die from old age, I died of whatever it was that overcome the weak immune system etc.

Just to be clear, I DO have sympathy for these people. A lot...it pains me so to hear that people are dying over this. It sucks, its the worst possible thing that could have happened.

However, I don't think any of you "really" understand the gravity of the situation we are in economically....gas is like 1.30 a gallon and dropping.....

I don't think folks really understand that the Stock Market lost 12 trillion dollars in a few days.

I don't think folks really understand that by these twit governors shutting everything down they have DECIMATED our economy unlike anything ever seen in the history of this country.

The Federal Reserve WARNED these governors and the Federal government that if they went along with psycho Fachi's plan that we would be looking at a 32%+ Unemployment rating on the other side of this (This was assuming the lockdown would end before Easter)

32% unemployment is unheard of!

The highest unemployment during the ENTIRE Great Depression was only 24.9%....32%?...you folks have NO IDEA what is coming...but your going to be up to speed here shortly...yeah....you are soooo gonna regret going along with the lockdown in a few weeks....yes you willl....

By the end of May most of you won't even be able to afford electricity, let alone an internet connection.

Half the small businesses they shuttered will never re-open....47 million people will be out of work(an unheard of number). The protections put into place after the Great Depression were not designed to handle a forced lock down situations

The Fed has pretty much said they won't be able to just pump money into this like they did in 2007, they can't...they are already at near zero percent interest now, and inflating the money supply anymore risk killing the currency. Assuming they lift the lockdowns May 1st we lost over 12 trillion in the stock market, and we lost about 6 trillion due to shuttered businesses.....so how exactly do you think they are going to stimulate 18 trillion dollars in losses? I'll tell you, they can't and won't.

you folks are nuts if you think life and working will go back to normal after this...it will take 10 years to recover from this.(best case scenario)

The government will have no choice but to sit back and let the market self correct...they don't have the capital to pump 30+ trillion into the economy without unmanageable inflation...

Many people you know will lose their homes, the economy is projected to contract 22% additionally after this is over.

It was the stupidest move in history to shuttered the economy the way they did. Like every other pandemic, you just gotta do the best you can, stay open and work though it. We didn't shut down the country before we a flu vaccine, even if this one is slightly more deadly, shutting down the country was a mistake/

The US and its mostly stupid governors have literally cut off their heads to save their hands...

what a shame, what a shame...should have left the economy open and told people who were sick to stay home and everyone else goes to work with a bid of extra pay funded by the government...this just may be the biggest collective failure in history....both the states and the feds...a country cna't exist without an economy and right now we have hardly any economy at all.

Should have increased the death toll 10 fold? Yeah, sure. Of course that is Trump's theme song.....



Ah, The Apprentice. YOU'RE FIRED!

I understand your angst, but try asking a dead fellow how much good his money is doing him now.

j/c

Trump Retweets Call To Fire Fauci After He Criticized U.S. Response To Virus

Topline: President Trump retweeted a message by a Republican politician on Sunday evening calling for Dr. Anthony Fauci to be fired from his post, the latest sign the president is disgruntled by the attention Fauci is receiving during his administration’s most severe crisis.

Sunday’s tweet, which was initially posted by to DeAnna Lorraine, a Republican candidate for Congress running for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) seat, appeared to be in response to Fauci’s comments on CNN Sunday morning in which he said the U.S. could have acted more swiftly in preventing the outbreak by implementing stricter social distancing orders

When CNN State of the Union host Jake Tapper asked whether the U.S. should have responded sooner to the crisis, Fauci agreed, but avoided direct criticism of his boss: “I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. Obviously, no one is going to deny that. But what goes into those kinds of decisions is complicated.”

Lorraine then tweeted: "Fauci is now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he could've saved more lives,” the tweet Trump retweeted from Fauci was telling people on February 29th that there was nothing to worry about and it posed no threat to the US public at large. Time to #FireFauci."

Trump retweeted Lorraine’s message, adding his own: “Sorry Fake News, it’s all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up. Thank you @OANN.”

Fauci and the president have contradicted each other several times about the U.S. response to the coronavirus outbreak and medical advice relating to the virus, including when it’s safe to reopen the country and how effective the experimental coronavirus drug hydroxychloroquine is, though Fauci has been hesitant to bash the president directly; even as Trump has praised Fauci publicly, aides have maintained the president has grown “impatient” with the doctor in recent weeks, the New York Times NYT reported in late March.

Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert and member of the White House coronavirus task force,, has become one of the nation’s most respected and trusted officials during the crisis, appearing on television constantly to update the country about the state of the outbreak; an April 8 Quinnipiac poll found that 78% of the country approved of Fauci’s handling of the outbreak, with just 7% in disapproval.

Key background: Multiple investigative reports from some of the nation’s top newspapers found that the Trump administration’s response to the virus outbreak was woefully inadequate.

On Saturday, the New York Times published a report that found Trump “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.”

In January and February, as warning signs were beginning to flash, Trump and his administration ignored reports about the virus because of fears about hurting the economy and trade relations with China. The White House also received guidance about social distancing guidelines weeks before they were issued by the president.

Earlier this month, the Washington Post also published a piece with similar findings: “The U.S. was beset by denial and dysfunction as the coronavirus raged,” the headline read. Trump took 70 days from initial warning to act on slowing the outbreak, even as the virus spread inside the U.S.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackbrewste...s/#7af6a3e51d67

Who didn't see this one coming?