Trump pretends he anticipated the coronavirus pandemic, but his own words prove him wrong
For weeks, President Trump has minimized the coronavirus, mocked concern about it and treated the risk cavalierly. On Tuesday he took to the White House podium and made a remarkable pronouncement: He knew it was a pandemic all along.
“I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic,” Mr. Trump told reporters.
Here is what Mr. Trump actually said from the beginning of the pandemic.
Jan. 22, asked on CNBC whether he was concerned about a global pandemic: “No, not at all,’’ Mr. Trump said. “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”
Feb. 26, at a White House news conference, about the number of reported cases of the virus: “We’re going down, not up. We’re going very substantially down, not up.”
Feb. 27, at a White House meeting: “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.”
March 7, seated next to President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil at Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach, Fla., club: “I’m not concerned at all.” (At least three members of the Brazilian delegation and one Trump donor at Mar-a-Lago on March 7 later tested positive for the virus.) [Continue reading…]