Donald Trump likes to pretend that he’s done everything he could for the people of America during the COVID-19 outbreak, but we now know that he was warned numerous times before he took any action at all. During the time that he could have been preparing for what experts where saying was an imminent outbreak, he went golfing and tweeted like it was business as usual.
Trump again says he "inherited a very broken test." The faulty test was developed by the CDC in 2020.
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) April 28, 2020
Trump has said that he doesn’t think there is anything he could have done differently, and refused to take responsibility for the botched relief effort.
Now a top official at the CDC is saying that Trump could have done a lot different. Anne Schuchat, the No. 2 official at the CDC, and this is what she said:
“The extensive travel from Europe, once Europe was having outbreaks, really accelerated our importations and the rapid spread. I think the timing of our travel alerts should have been earlier.”
2 men in Georgia drank cleaning products last weekend, reports @AJC. Officials say it's unclear if any were prompted by President Trump's comments about disinfectants and COVID-19.
Calls to poison centers for disinfectants are up 20% this year, says the CDC. pic.twitter.com/AlQsTLv7s7
— AJ+ (@ajplus) April 29, 2020
She continued, hitting on the fact that, despite Trump’s claims that he closed the borders in late January, imports from Europe arrived into mid March:
“We clearly didn’t recognize the full importations that were happening.”
CDC's No. 2 official says Trump admin should have banned travel from Europe earlier to slow coronavirus https://t.co/wZwcc4uytv pic.twitter.com/jcwsCFKfdo
— The Hill (@thehill) May 2, 2020
Schuchat also says that states did not move fast enough to close business and issue shelter-in-place warnings:
“I think in retrospect, taking action earlier could have delayed further amplification (of the U.S. outbreak), or delayed the speed of it.”
They knew.
They didn’t want the American public to know.
They lied to cover it up.
As we detail, the US military raised the threat level to WATCHCON1 for the imminent pandemic.
A CDC official warned the public. Trump threatened you fire her. And Azar and Esper fell in line.
— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) April 28, 2020