10 Of Trump’s Most Damaging Coronavirus Lies

[Tour2ma]

1. “Anybody that needs a test gets a test.”

Just reported that the United States has done far more “testing” than any other nation, by far! In fact, over an eight day span, the United States now does more testing than what South Korea (which has been a very successful tester) does over an eight week span. Great job!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 25, 2020

Trump has regularly and grossly overstated U.S. coronavirus testing capacity. “Anybody that needs a test gets a test,” Trump said on March 6. “We — they’re there. They have the tests. And the tests are beautiful. Anybody that needs a test gets a test.”

By March 8, two days later, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had conducted around 1,700 tests. The test shortage persists to this day. 

Why is this a problem?

It’s impossible to know where the coronavirus has spread if we’re incapable of testing people who think they have symptoms. And if we don’t know where it’s spreading and how fast, we can’t mobilize scarce resources like ventilators and personal protective equipment in advance of major outbreaks. That’s how you end up with nurses using trash bags as PPE, and dying because of it.

A lack of test kits ― and pretending it’s not a problem ― puts everyone at risk.

 

2. “Within a couple of days [the number of positive cases is] going to be down to close to zero.” 

As he pivoted from outright dismissal of a problem he said would “miraculously” go away and began acknowledging the coronavirus was something to deal with, Trump still downplayed the threat.

“When you have 15 [positive] people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero,” he said on Feb. 26. “That’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”

Why is this a problem?

Conveying the truth about the pandemic’s threat may have emphasized the importance of early social distancing and stay-at-home orders that experts say are critical in slowing the spread of the coronavirus.

 

3. “This is their new hoax.”

At a Feb. 28 rally in South Carolina, Trump accused Democrats of politicizing his lackluster coronavirus response, which he proclaimed was “one of the great jobs.”

“This is their new hoax,” he said. “We have 15 [coronavirus-positive] 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.”

Why is this a problem?

The same day the CDC urged the country take “aggressive measures” to “prevent widespread transmission of the virus,” the president undercut the message with a much larger megaphone.

Trump’s politicizing of the problem likely led to many of his supporters failing to see the virus as a serious public health issue, and choosing not to take steps to prevent the spread.

 

4. Repeated selective amnesia about having fired the experts whose job was to foresee exactly this situation.

Trump dismantled the National Security Council’s pandemic response unit in 2018, a subject he claims to know nothing about now that the U.S. is being buffeted by the coronavirus pandemic.

Asked about the decision by PBS reporter Yamiche Alcindor earlier this month, Trump said he didn’t “know anything about” it, called the question “nasty” and moved on. (For the record, he did know, and here’s video to prove it.)

It gets worse: in July, the Trump administration eliminated a Beijing-based American public health official whose role was to help detect disease outbreaks in China.

Why is this a problem?

The pandemic response unit certainly would have come in handy in responding to the coronavirus.

“It would be nice if the office was still there,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Congress.

Trump’s choice to dismantle that unit, and then to deny knowledge, shows he wasn’t expecting a pandemic and wasn’t prepared to take the necessary actions to deal with one, even though experts in Trump’s own government had conducted exercises showing a pandemic could cause death, disability and job loss that would harm the economy. 

 

5. “Nobody could have ever seen something like this coming.”

On March 25, Trump framed the pandemic as a completely unexpected problem nobody could have prepared for. He’s done this many, many times.

Why is this a problem?

Many experts did see this coming.

“The problem is he’s using that kind of information to justify, in some way or explain, the incompetencies of what this administration has been doing, or not doing, in preparation for something that we knew was coming,” Dr. Irwin Redlener, director Of Columbia University’s National Center For Disaster Preparedness, told MSNBC on Thursday.

“The president did not cause this virus to develop,” he conceded. But Trump’s response to the pandemic, including claiming it was unforeseeable even as it ravaged Italy, is “leading the country in the wrong direction with misinformation that has been extremely destructive to our efforts to combat this calamity that we have on our doorstep.”

 

6. Comparing COVID-19 to the flu.

“So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu,” Trump tweeted on Monday. “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!”

Trump has repeatedly sought to diminish the severity of COVID-19 and deflect blame for his administration’s failures by comparing it to something we’re all familiar with.

Why is this a problem?

For starters, it’s false. According to Fauci, COVID-19 “is 10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu.”

Worse, Trump has begun using this false equivalence to advocate for sending Americans back to work long before experts believe that’s wise.

 

7. We’re “very close” to a vaccine.  

The president has frequently overstated the speed of vaccine development, telling the public a remedy could be available in as little as “two months” and insisting it was “very close” in his first press conference on the matter.

Why is this a problem?

His March 2 statement was immediately corrected by Fauci: “Let me make sure you get the ... information,” he said, noting a vaccine could be ready “at the earliest [in] a year to a year-and-a-half, no matter how fast you go,” something Fauci emphasized he’d told the president prior to that press conference.

Once again, Trump ignored facts and put forth a rosier, and false, alternative that downplays the severity of the reality at hand, potentially prompting some to take actions that could spread the disease. Instead of offering reassuring clarity, the president muddled the message and caused confusion.

 

8. Hyping a speculative, untested drug as a coronavirus treatment.

At a news conference last week, Trump repeatedly touted an anti-malarial drug called chloroquine as a potential coronavirus treatment, going so far as to suggest the Food and Drug Administration had approved it for COVID-19.

“It’s shown very encouraging ― very, very encouraging early results. And we’re going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately. And that’s where the FDA has been so great. They ― they’ve gone through the approval process; it’s been approved. And they did it ― they took it down from many, many months to immediate. So we’re going to be able to make that drug available by prescription or states,” Trump said.

Why is this a problem? 

The FDA hasn’t approved chloroquine for use against COVID-19, a point the agency was forced to clarify in a statement after Trump’s briefing. Experts said the drug can be fatal if misused and there’s no evidence beyond anecdotal stories that it works against COVID-19.

Nevertheless, Trump’s statement prompted hoarding of the drug around the world, including in the U.S., where unscrupulous doctors began fraudulently writing themselves prescriptions for it.

An Arizona man died and his wife was hospitalized in critical condition after the two heard Trump tout the supposedly game-changing drug on TV. They drank an aquarium cleaning product that contained the drug because they thought it would help them avoid contracting the disease.

 

9. “The cure can’t be worse than the problem.”

Trump has been rolling out variants of this line all week, using it to argue that the economic damage caused by COVID-19 is worse than the disease itself, and, therefore, we should cease social distancing and return to work by Easter.

Why is this a problem?

The economic devastation being caused with much of the country shut down by coronavirus restrictions is apparent ― nobody can argue with that. But ending social distancing efforts prematurely will stretch this crisis out longer, put far greater strain on our health care system (leading to more deaths), and make the coronavirus harder to control in the long run, potentially causing even more economic disruption.

 

10. Bonus accidental truth: “I don’t take any responsibility at all.”

At a March 13 press conference, Trump declared a national emergency and, when asked about repeated delays in producing and distributing coronavirus test kits, completely washed his hands of the mess. 

“I don’t take responsibility at all,” he told reporters. While this isn’t exactly a lie, it warrants a mention nonetheless.

Why is this a problem? 

He boasted that he had the foresight to “close up our country to China,” but Trump failed to take more drastic action that may have slowed the spread of coronavirus in the U.S., potentially saving thousands of lives. His slow response came despite warnings from experts and U.S. intelligence agencies, who warned him in February that coronavirus could be a global danger, according to The Washington Post.

Trump’s rosy assessment of the pandemic’s threat to the U.S. may have been colored by assurances from Chinese President Xi Jinping, who Trump repeatedly praised for handling the outbreak in China. Once Trump’s misjudgment became clear, he turned to another standby ― racism ― and began calling the coronavirus the “China virus.” This week, following a surge of hate crimes against Asian Americans, Trump said he might stop using the term.

The president’s “don’t take responsibility” comment was a sharp departure from the Trump of 2013, who tweeted: “Leadership: Whatever happens, you’re responsible. If it doesn’t happen, you’re responsible.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-coronavirus-lies-covid19_n_5e7b7d1ac5b6b7d80959966f

[Vambo]

[Tour2ma]

I've seen that one before...

Limited supply?

 

Thank you, though, for the inspiration for this thread...

[MLD Woody]

Figured I'd post one of these too

 

[Gorka]

On ‎4‎/‎3‎/‎2020 at 4:58 PM, Tour2ma said:

1. “Anybody that needs a test gets a test.”

Just reported that the United States has done far more “testing” than any other nation, by far! In fact, over an eight day span, the United States now does more testing than what South Korea (which has been a very successful tester) does over an eight week span. Great job!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 25, 2020

Trump has regularly and grossly overstated U.S. coronavirus testing capacity. “Anybody that needs a test gets a test,” Trump said on March 6. “We — they’re there. They have the tests. And the tests are beautiful. Anybody that needs a test gets a test.”

By March 8, two days later, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had conducted around 1,700 tests. The test shortage persists to this day. 

Why is this a problem?

It’s impossible to know where the coronavirus has spread if we’re incapable of testing people who think they have symptoms. And if we don’t know where it’s spreading and how fast, we can’t mobilize scarce resources like ventilators and personal protective equipment in advance of major outbreaks. That’s how you end up with nurses using trash bags as PPE, and dying because of it.

A lack of test kits ― and pretending it’s not a problem ― puts everyone at risk.

 

2. “Within a couple of days [the number of positive cases is] going to be down to close to zero.” 

As he pivoted from outright dismissal of a problem he said would “miraculously” go away and began acknowledging the coronavirus was something to deal with, Trump still downplayed the threat.

“When you have 15 [positive] people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero,” he said on Feb. 26. “That’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”

Why is this a problem?

Conveying the truth about the pandemic’s threat may have emphasized the importance of early social distancing and stay-at-home orders that experts say are critical in slowing the spread of the coronavirus.

 

3. “This is their new hoax.”

At a Feb. 28 rally in South Carolina, Trump accused Democrats of politicizing his lackluster coronavirus response, which he proclaimed was “one of the great jobs.”

“This is their new hoax,” he said. “We have 15 [coronavirus-positive] 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.”

Why is this a problem?

The same day the CDC urged the country take “aggressive measures” to “prevent widespread transmission of the virus,” the president undercut the message with a much larger megaphone.

Trump’s politicizing of the problem likely led to many of his supporters failing to see the virus as a serious public health issue, and choosing not to take steps to prevent the spread.

 

4. Repeated selective amnesia about having fired the experts whose job was to foresee exactly this situation.

Trump dismantled the National Security Council’s pandemic response unit in 2018, a subject he claims to know nothing about now that the U.S. is being buffeted by the coronavirus pandemic.

Asked about the decision by PBS reporter Yamiche Alcindor earlier this month, Trump said he didn’t “know anything about” it, called the question “nasty” and moved on. (For the record, he did know, and here’s video to prove it.)

It gets worse: in July, the Trump administration eliminated a Beijing-based American public health official whose role was to help detect disease outbreaks in China.

Why is this a problem?

The pandemic response unit certainly would have come in handy in responding to the coronavirus.

“It would be nice if the office was still there,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Congress.

Trump’s choice to dismantle that unit, and then to deny knowledge, shows he wasn’t expecting a pandemic and wasn’t prepared to take the necessary actions to deal with one, even though experts in Trump’s own government had conducted exercises showing a pandemic could cause death, disability and job loss that would harm the economy. 

 

5. “Nobody could have ever seen something like this coming.”

On March 25, Trump framed the pandemic as a completely unexpected problem nobody could have prepared for. He’s done this many, many times.

Why is this a problem?

Many experts did see this coming.

“The problem is he’s using that kind of information to justify, in some way or explain, the incompetencies of what this administration has been doing, or not doing, in preparation for something that we knew was coming,” Dr. Irwin Redlener, director Of Columbia University’s National Center For Disaster Preparedness, told MSNBC on Thursday.

“The president did not cause this virus to develop,” he conceded. But Trump’s response to the pandemic, including claiming it was unforeseeable even as it ravaged Italy, is “leading the country in the wrong direction with misinformation that has been extremely destructive to our efforts to combat this calamity that we have on our doorstep.”

 

6. Comparing COVID-19 to the flu.

“So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu,” Trump tweeted on Monday. “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!”

Trump has repeatedly sought to diminish the severity of COVID-19 and deflect blame for his administration’s failures by comparing it to something we’re all familiar with.

Why is this a problem?

For starters, it’s false. According to Fauci, COVID-19 “is 10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu.”

Worse, Trump has begun using this false equivalence to advocate for sending Americans back to work long before experts believe that’s wise.

 

7. We’re “very close” to a vaccine.  

The president has frequently overstated the speed of vaccine development, telling the public a remedy could be available in as little as “two months” and insisting it was “very close” in his first press conference on the matter.

Why is this a problem?

His March 2 statement was immediately corrected by Fauci: “Let me make sure you get the ... information,” he said, noting a vaccine could be ready “at the earliest [in] a year to a year-and-a-half, no matter how fast you go,” something Fauci emphasized he’d told the president prior to that press conference.

Once again, Trump ignored facts and put forth a rosier, and false, alternative that downplays the severity of the reality at hand, potentially prompting some to take actions that could spread the disease. Instead of offering reassuring clarity, the president muddled the message and caused confusion.

 

8. Hyping a speculative, untested drug as a coronavirus treatment.

At a news conference last week, Trump repeatedly touted an anti-malarial drug called chloroquine as a potential coronavirus treatment, going so far as to suggest the Food and Drug Administration had approved it for COVID-19.

“It’s shown very encouraging ― very, very encouraging early results. And we’re going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately. And that’s where the FDA has been so great. They ― they’ve gone through the approval process; it’s been approved. And they did it ― they took it down from many, many months to immediate. So we’re going to be able to make that drug available by prescription or states,” Trump said.

Why is this a problem? 

The FDA hasn’t approved chloroquine for use against COVID-19, a point the agency was forced to clarify in a statement after Trump’s briefing. Experts said the drug can be fatal if misused and there’s no evidence beyond anecdotal stories that it works against COVID-19.

Nevertheless, Trump’s statement prompted hoarding of the drug around the world, including in the U.S., where unscrupulous doctors began fraudulently writing themselves prescriptions for it.

An Arizona man died and his wife was hospitalized in critical condition after the two heard Trump tout the supposedly game-changing drug on TV. They drank an aquarium cleaning product that contained the drug because they thought it would help them avoid contracting the disease.

 

9. “The cure can’t be worse than the problem.”

Trump has been rolling out variants of this line all week, using it to argue that the economic damage caused by COVID-19 is worse than the disease itself, and, therefore, we should cease social distancing and return to work by Easter.

Why is this a problem?

The economic devastation being caused with much of the country shut down by coronavirus restrictions is apparent ― nobody can argue with that. But ending social distancing efforts prematurely will stretch this crisis out longer, put far greater strain on our health care system (leading to more deaths), and make the coronavirus harder to control in the long run, potentially causing even more economic disruption.

 

10. Bonus accidental truth: “I don’t take any responsibility at all.”

At a March 13 press conference, Trump declared a national emergency and, when asked about repeated delays in producing and distributing coronavirus test kits, completely washed his hands of the mess. 

“I don’t take responsibility at all,” he told reporters. While this isn’t exactly a lie, it warrants a mention nonetheless.

Why is this a problem? 

He boasted that he had the foresight to “close up our country to China,” but Trump failed to take more drastic action that may have slowed the spread of coronavirus in the U.S., potentially saving thousands of lives. His slow response came despite warnings from experts and U.S. intelligence agencies, who warned him in February that coronavirus could be a global danger, according to The Washington Post.

Trump’s rosy assessment of the pandemic’s threat to the U.S. may have been colored by assurances from Chinese President Xi Jinping, who Trump repeatedly praised for handling the outbreak in China. Once Trump’s misjudgment became clear, he turned to another standby ― racism ― and began calling the coronavirus the “China virus.” This week, following a surge of hate crimes against Asian Americans, Trump said he might stop using the term.

The president’s “don’t take responsibility” comment was a sharp departure from the Trump of 2013, who tweeted: “Leadership: Whatever happens, you’re responsible. If it doesn’t happen, you’re responsible.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-coronavirus-lies-covid19_n_5e7b7d1ac5b6b7d80959966f

I'll just park this right here:

The Top 10 Lies About President Trump’s Response to the Coronavirus

 It’s troubling to see how quickly disinformation about the government’s response to the coronavirus has spread. Democrats and the mainstream media have willingly spread false information in the hopes of damaging Trump politically before the election in November. Many of these lies were quickly debunked, but that hasn’t stopped the false information from being repeated over and over.  The left hopes these lies will continue to spread, but so far it doesn’t seem to be working since Trump’s approval numbers for his handling of the pandemic have gone up. But that doesn’t mean the left will give up their disinformation campaign. To help set the record straight, I’ve compiled the top ten lies that have been spread about Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. There are certainly plenty more, and you are welcome to mention them in the comments.

 

10. Trump downplayed the mortality rate of the coronavirus

 

In early March, the World Health Organization said that 3.4 percent of coronavirus patients had died from the disease. “Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 (the disease spread by the virus) cases have died,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a briefing. “By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected.”

 

Trump said this number was false, as the mortality rate was actually much less because their number didn’t take into account unreported cases. In an interview with Sean Hannity on March 4, Trump challenged WHO’s number. “Well, I think the 3.4% is really a false number,” Trump said, asserting that the actual mortality rate is “way under 1 percent.”

And Trump was right. He wasn’t downplaying the mortality rate, as has been suggested. As testing in the United States has increased, the mortality rate has decreased. The same is true worldwide.

Yet, there were so-called experts who greatly overestimated the mortality rate in order to spark fear and panic. MSNBC contributor Dr. Joseph Fair told a panel that up to 20 percent of the U.S. population might die from the coronavirus.

 

9. Trump lied when he said Google was developing a national coronavirus website

 

When President Trump declared the coronavirus a national emergency, he announced that Google was developing a website to direct people to coronavirus testing locations nationwide.

"I want to thank Google. Google is helping to develop a website, it’s going to be very quickly done, unlike websites of the past, to determine whether a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location," Trump said during a press conference.

Google confirmed this in a tweet after Trump’s remarks, but the media seemed intent on calling Trump’s claim false. HuffPost literally called Trump’s claim a lie because the site was actually being developed by a subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet. This ultimately forced Google to confirm, again, that they were partnering with the federal government to develop a national coronavirus website. “Google is partnering with the US Government in developing a nationwide website that includes information about COVID-19 symptoms, risk and testing information,” Google said on Twitter.

After Google backed up Trump, he thanked them and ripped the media for spreading fake news. "I want to thank the people at Google and Google communications because as you know they substantiated what I said on Friday," Trump said. "The head of Google, who is a great gentleman, called us and he apologized. I don't know where the press got their fake news, but they got it someplace. As you know, this is from Google. They put out a release and you guys can figure it out yourselves and how that got out. And I'm sure you guys will apologize, but it would be great if we could get really give the news correctly. It'd be so, so wonderful."

 

8.  Trump "dissolved" the WH pandemic response office

 

Two days after Trump declared the coronavirus a national emergency, the Washington Post ran an opinion piece by Elizabeth Cameron, who ran the White House pandemic office under Obama, alleging that Trump had dissolved the office in 2018. She claimed because of this, “the federal government’s slow response to the coronavirus isn’t a surprise.”

This claim spread like wildfire, even though it was completely false. Days after WaPo ran the piece, they published another article by Tim Morrison, former senior director for counterproliferation and biodefense on the National Security Council, who debunked the allegation made by Cameron and other former Obama administration officials.

 

Direct, factual refutation of claim that the President disbanded his pandemic response team by the NSC official who led the biodefense mission.

The falsehood was widely reported and even stated as a fact by an NBC reporter in a question to the President. https://t.co/qTwfTfD0Mf

— John Noonan (@noonanjo) March 16, 2020

 

 

 

What good is there in spreading false information, as Elizabeth Cameron did? “This is Washington. It’s an election year,” Morrison laments. “Officials out of power want back into power after November. But the middle of a worldwide health emergency is not the time to be making tendentious accusations.”

 

7. Trump ignored early intel briefings on possible pandemic

 

The Washington Post again was the source of another bogus claim when they reported that intelligence agencies warned about a possible pandemic back in January and February and that Trump “failed to take action that might have slowed the spread of the pathogen.”

It was fake news. The Trump administration had begun aggressively addressing the coronavirus threat immediately after China reported the discovery of the coronavirus to the World Health Organization. In addition to implementing various precautionary travel restrictions, the administration fast-tracked the use of testing kits, set up a Coronavirus Task Force, and implemented a travel ban with China, several weeks before WHO declared the coronavirus a pandemic.

In actuality, it was Trump’s critics who weren’t taking the coronavirus situation seriously. Joe Biden even accused Trump of “fearmongering” and “xenophobia” for his travel ban. Even now, the Washington Post is suggesting the travel ban wasn’t enough.

 

6. Trump cut funding to the CDC & NIH

 

Back in February both Joe Biden and Mike Bloomberg (who hadn’t dropped out of the Democratic primary yet) accused President Trump of cutting funding to critical health agencies during a primary debate. “There’s nobody here to figure out what the hell we should be doing. And he’s defunded — he’s defunded Centers for Disease Control, CDC, so we don’t have the organization we need. This is a very serious thing," Bloomberg claimed.

The Obama-Biden administration "increased the budget of the CDC. We increased the NIH budget. ... He’s wiped all that out. ... He cut the funding for the entire effort," Biden claimed.

They were both wrong.

According to an Associated Press fact-check, proposed budget cuts never happened, and funding increased. They acknowledged that some public health experts believe that a bigger concern than White House budgets “is the steady erosion of a CDC grant program for state and local public health emergency preparedness,” but, they note, “that decline was set in motion by a congressional budget measure that predates Trump.”

The AP also noted that “The public health system has a playbook to follow for pandemic preparation — regardless of who’s president or whether specific instructions are coming from the White House. Those plans were put into place in anticipation of another flu pandemic, but are designed to work for any respiratory-borne disease.”

 

5. Trump "muzzled" Dr. Fauci

 

In late February, the New York Times claimed that the Trump administration had “muzzled” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), by preventing him from speaking publicly about the coronavirus without approval from the administration.

It wasn’t true. But, the claim was echoed throughout the mainstream media, and ultimately was brought up in a press briefing, and Trump was asked directly about it, and he let Dr. Fauci clear it up.

“I’ve never been muzzled, ever, and I’ve been doing this since Reagan,” he said. “I’m not being muzzled by this administration.”

 

 

 

Despite the fact this claim was debunked, Joe Biden kept repeating it as if it were true. “And, look, right now you have this president, hasn’t allowed his scientists to speak, number one,” Biden said on ABC's This Week a couple days after Fauci said unequivocally he wasn’t being muzzled. “He has the vice president speaking, not the scientists who know what they're talking about, like Fauci."

 

Joe Biden just touted the debunked talking point that President Trump had muzzled Doctor Fauci form discussing the coronavirus.

This is what Fauci had to say about that claim yesterday:

"I’ve never been muzzled ever and I’ve been doing this since...Reagan."

ROLL THE TAPE! pic.twitter.com/1HAcLl3qes

— Francis Brennan (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@FrancisBrennan) March 1, 2020

 

 

 

4. Trump didn’t act quickly and isn’t doing enough

If you listen to Democrats, Trump didn’t act quickly enough and is botching the government response. Joe Biden has tried to perpetuate this falsehood by giving press briefings telling Trump what he should be doing.

The big problem with that is that when Biden has offered his own plan, he simply took things that Trump had already done, said he should do those things, and pretended they were his own ideas.

In addition to this, one of the most significant actions taken by Trump, the travel ban with China, was actually opposed by Joe Biden, and Trump’s critics on the left. Unfortunately for them, WHO experts admitted Trump’s actions saved lives in the United States.

Fox News contributor Liz Peek noted back in February, “Even before a single case of the virus erupted organically in our country [...] and even as the administration had acted preemptively and effectively to keep virus carriers out of our country, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and others were eager to stoke fear and blame Donald Trump.”

Dr. Ronny Jackson, who served as White House physician from 2013 to 2018, also credited Trump for his decisive response to the coronavirus epidemic. "The president has done everything he needed to do in this case," he said. "He’s acted quickly and decisively. He did what he always has done ... he went with his instincts."

Jackson added, "What’s going on in Italy and Iran is not going to happen here I think, because of the president's quick and decisive actions. I think we are going to be more in line with what’s going on in South Korea and things of that nature.”

 

3. Trump told governors they were “on their own”

 

In a tweet sent last week, New York Times editorial board member Mara Gay claimed that during a conference call with governors about the coronavirus pandemic, President Trump told them they were “on their own” in getting the equipment they need. “‘Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves,’ Mr. Trump told the governors during the conference call, a recording of which was shared with The New York Times.”

She lied. Ms. Gay deliberately misrepresented Trump’s words. Trump actually told governors on the call: “Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves. We will be backing you, but try getting it yourselves. Point of sales, much better, much more direct if you can get it yourself.”

The false narrative that Trump had told governors they were on their own, essentially to expect no help from the federal government, spread like wildfire.

 

2. Trump turned down testing kits from WHO

 

A Politico hit piece from early March claimed that the World Health Organization offered the United States coronavirus testing kits, but Trump refused to accept them. This claim spread quickly, and Joe Biden even alluded to it during his March 15 debate with Bernie Sanders, claiming, “The World Health Organization offered the testing kits that they have available and to give it to us now. We refused them. We did not want to buy them.”

It wasn’t true. "No discussions occurred between WHO and CDC about WHO providing COVID-19 tests to the United States," WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris explained. "This is consistent with experience since the United States does not ordinarily rely on WHO for reagents or diagnostic tests because of sufficient domestic capacity." According to WHO, its priority was to send testing kits to "countries with the weakest health systems."

So, why did testing get off to a slow start in the United States? Ellie Bufkin at our sister site Townhall noted that “Testing in the United States was fraught with difficulty in large part due to the slow approval by the Food and Drug Administration to allow testing kits developed by private companies outside of the government-controlled CDC to be used at a local or national level. Those FDA policies are consistent with the Obama Administration's response to H1N1 and Ebola in 2009 and 2014 respectively.”

 

1. Trump called the coronavirus “a hoax”

 

To this day the left (and the media) claim Trump called the coronavirus a hoax. He said no such thing. While the country was distracted by impeachment, the Trump administration was busy addressing the coronavirus outbreak, taking various measures to limit the spread of the virus in the United States. Impeachment quickly faded, so they decided to aggressively politicize his response to the coronavirus outbreak. Joe Biden even called Trump’s travel ban with China an overreaction, and accused him of trying to scare the public. “This is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysteria and xenophobia ± hysterical xenophobia — and fearmongering to lead the way instead of science.”

President Trump responded to these allegations during a rally in South Carolina, calling the Democrats’ politicization of the coronavirus "the new hoax." The media jumped on this line, claiming that Trump called the virus, not the Democrats' reactions to it, a hoax. The lie spread like wildfire and Joe Biden even used the lie as a talking point on the stump. There was quite a stir when Politico’s story repeating the false claim that Trump called the virus a hoax was flagged by Facebook fact-checkers as fake news, but other fact-checkers couldn’t deny that the claim was false either.

[calfoxwc]

so, that clears Pres Trump, and Tour looks like, walks like, and posts like a...

[Gorka]

8 hours ago, calfoxwc said:

so, that clears Pres Trump, and Tour looks like, walks like, and posts like a...

Like a harp! Harping about this, harping about that!

TDS affects even the smartest of people. Tour is no dummy, and I wouldn't label him a lyre, it's just that these people believe what they want to believe, and that's final.

I've known my colleague in Michigan for 15 yrs. Great guy, smart guy, talk a lot about work and other stuff, but about 2 weeks ago was the first time ever we brought up politics. When he said he wished that Trump and his whole family caught the virus my heart sank. I shot down every reason he had for hating Trump, but none of it mattered. He just hates the guy because he hates the guy. After that we promised never to bring up politics again.

TDS affects everyone from the man on the street, to politicians, to the highly educated. Trump is not the problem. These people are.

[calfoxwc]

LOL

yep, Tour is too smart, I was hoping he'd ask me what it was, and I was going to joke about it.

I've been wondering about this. Maybe it goes back to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. The need to belong is one of those fundamental human needs. I guess there are some people who enjoy belonging to a political side that is as angry as they tend to be about most things. Like, liberals OPERATE their lives and moments on emotion. There rarely? ever seems to be a time when they analyze issues and situations.

     What liberals FEEL about Pres Trump doesn't jive with the FACTS. He's a "liar" but he's kept his promises amazingly. He's a "racist" but the same person who claims that derides him for looking stupid because of his "orange skin". Which, Pres Trump laughed about it - apparently they changed the lighting and it isn't as bad.

   

[Westside Steve]

Not paying attention, Allen is the password lyre?

WSS

[Vambo]

 

[Tour2ma]

On 4/5/2020 at 11:06 AM, calfoxwc said:

yep, Tour is too smart, I was hoping he'd ask me what it was, and I was going to joke about it.

Well I am and I did... back when you first posted it on a turtle shell...

[Tour2ma]

On 4/5/2020 at 11:06 AM, calfoxwc said:

I've been wondering about this. Maybe it goes back to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. The need to belong is one of those fundamental human needs. I guess there are some people who enjoy belonging to a political side that is as angry as they tend to be about most things. Like, liberals OPERATE their lives and moments on emotion. There rarely? ever seems to be a time when they analyze issues and situations.

LMFAO....

This from President Angry's #1 fanboy...

 

Effin' priceless...

[calfoxwc]

2 hours ago, Tour2ma said:

LMFAO....

This from President Angry's #1 fanboy...

Effin' priceless...

I'm sure that makes you happy to think that, but it's false. No angry here. I criticized Bush for not stopping illegal immigration, and I'd bash Pres Trump if he ignored it.

but he isn't.

Facts are what emotions should be based on, but that takes a comprehensive understanding of reality.

Although, I am humorously miffed we didn't catch any fish today. Cold and too much wind.

[Tour2ma]

On 4/8/2020 at 9:09 PM, calfoxwc said:

Facts are what emotions should be based on, but that takes a comprehensive understanding of reality.

Oh the irony...

[calfoxwc]

31 minutes ago, Tour2ma said:

Oh the irony...

only in your vivid liberal imagination....

[DieHardBrownsFan]

4 hours ago, Tour2ma said:

Oh the irony...

[DieHardBrownsFan]