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> because he has been undermining the virus from the beginning No, he wasn't. Where did you get that idea? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/business/china-tr

• PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  January 22nd, 2020: Asked if his administration was worried about a coronavirus pandemic, Trump says, “No, we’re not at all. And we have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China.” https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/22/trump-on-coronavirus-from-china-we-have-it-totally-under-control.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/22/trump-on-coronavirus-from-ch... January 30th: The World Health Organization declares the coronavirus a “public health emergency of international concern.” • At an event in Michigan, Trump says, “We’re working very strongly with China on the coronavirus—that’s a new thing that a lot of people are talking about….We think it’s going to have a very good ending for it. So that I can assure you.” https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-usmca-celebration-american-workers-warren-mi/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-pres... Now, I will grant you that he established the task force on Jan 29th, but against that I will note that the "China travel ban" did not prevent Americans who had been in Wuhan and other affected areas from returning to the US. I would also add the person chosen to head the task force at the start, secretary of HHS, Alex Azar, on August 23rd (after all we know now) explained things this way: > Alex M. Azar II, the secretary of health and human services, defended members of President Trump’s family on Friday for refusing to wear masks at the recent presidential debate despite a requirement that the audience do so. The first family and the president are “in a different situation than the rest of us,” Mr. Azar said, because they are in a protective bubble." https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/10/02/world/covid-19-coronavirus#azar-defends-refusal-of-trump-family-members-to-wear-masks-at-the-debate https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/10/02/world/covid-19-coron... I think it's fair to say that Trump's actions along with his then-private conversations with Woodward, can be reasonably (if incompletely) summarized by saying that he has tried to downplay the virus from the start.
• dkarl 6y ago
  And that's the problem with... let's say politics generally, but Trump especially. Two of Trump's biggest winning issues have been travel bans and China. Taking the opportunity to combine them was such a political no-brainer that he didn't need to believe in the virus to do it. Over and over again, when Trump has succeeded politically by saying things that are transparently untrue, we have been told that we'll never understand him politically if we are hung up on facts, because we need to "take him seriously, but not literally." I think that advice applies very neatly to this case. His travel ban was seriously meant as a gesture of resistance against a serious threat of disease from China, but the threat was not literally the coronavirus, as his subsequent rhetoric showed. Having a travel ban against foreigners arriving from China felt good and safe for his supporters regardless of the literal medical danger posed by a literal virus. "Seriously, but not literally" means that Trump could support a covid travel ban without believing that covid was a real threat. As usual, his target audience understood instantly, while the rest of us once again took months to figure out that Trump might not even have a literal opinion.