What Did Trump Do in February?
He says he did "a lot." Just nothing to stop the coronavirus.
As I’ve said before on Twitter, listening to Trump’s repeated bullshit claim that he “shut it down coming in from China” is like watching a horror movie in which the killer is inside the house, the family continues getting slaughtered one by one, and the dad just keeps repeating, “don’t worry I’ve locked all the doors.”
At yesterday’s indoor MAGA rally, the White House Press Corps was forced to watch a propaganda video that slapped together coverage of January’s partial (and ineffective) travel ban from China, plus some of the hostage videos Trump has extracted from Democratic Governors in exchange for the aid they needed to protect their state’s healthcare workers and stop their people dying.
When CBS News’ Paula Reid asked Trump why the whole month of February was missing from his new commercial (see clip above), Trump had no response. He quoted January casualty figures and claimed he did, “A lot. A lot. You know, we’ll give you a list.”
While you’re waiting for the White House to give you some imaginary list of actions Trump took to prevent the spread of COVID-19 during the entire month of February, here’s a list of what Trump was actually doing that month, via my @realDonalDrumpf parody account:
Trump, of course, continued to hold rallies and events at Mar-a-Lago into March, including one on March 7 where he stood alongside Brazilian President Bolsonaro and said, “No, I’m not concerned at all. No I’m not,” about the coronavirus getting closer to the White House and Washington DC.
There are now more than 600,000 cases in the U.S., and more than 25,000 deaths. More than 500 of those deaths are in Washington DC, Maryland and Virginia.
With 25,000 dead, Trump’s repeated “we pretty much shut it down coming in from China” claim is ridiculous on its face. But we now also know that it’s a total lie: 430,000 people flew to the U.S. on directs flights from China after the outbreak began—plus countless others who skirted the ban by taking alternate routes.
We also know now that New York became the global epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak thanks mainly to travelers bringing the virus from Italy and other European countries.
Even after the outbreak in Italy became the top global news story, ABC News reported the President lied to the public that passengers from Milan were being screened for coronavirus. They weren’t:
As passenger Mauricio Marchiori told ABC: “I was surprised that there wasn’t any control, especially because we fly from Milan.”
That was February 26. Two days before Trump held a MAGA rally in North Carolina and told the crowd: “The Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus…. They tried the impeachment hoax.... They tried anything…. This is their new hoax.”
So the truth is, Trump did “a lot” in February. A lot to make sure that COVID-19 spread untested and unchecked to every state in America.
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