Indeed, hindsight is 20/20. At the same time, this didn't require parsing someone like Hitler's motives. Viruses have no free will, and epidemics can be modeled scientifically. The Trump Administration knew enough about the virus to act and just didn't.
There have been several reports on this already. A more complete picture of what the Trump Administration knew, and when, is emerging by the day.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/13/coronavirus-pandemic-trump-fauci-white-house-saw-coming/
More proof: Other countries got their initial coronavirus response together much more quickly than we did, and benefited as a result. One of those countries was South Korea, and Trump has since been begging South Korea for PPE. https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/24/politics/trump-seeks-allies-coronavirus-help/index.html
Trump banned travel from China on Jan. 31 which is the sole action a lot of his defenders are pointing to. Other than that, throughout February he gave all sorts of other indications in public statements that the virus was under control, and/or was a Democrat/media hoax to unseat him, including his remarks at this infamous rally.
He finally acknowledged the inevitable and declared a national emergency over Covid-19 on Mar. 13, but the weeks of delay put us behind the 8-ball.
That's what Dr. Fauci was saying on Sunday, in so many words, although to a much milder degree than I just did. And he might lose his job over it.
Trump is the textbook definition of a snowflake and should be voted out in November, or whenever we get around to holding the next election.
One more time, dude. He called it "their new hoax." Words he said. Can't be erased.
Read the paragraph "in context" and it's clear he was equating the virus and/or the virus "panic" to Russiagate and Ukrainegate. Just another allegedly fake scandal to ridicule and get past.
But don't take my word for it: just read the verbatim transcript over and over again until it's burned into your skull.
Lol. I quoted the whole passage in context. Though it's garbled inaccurate nonsense as usual from our President, it's not too difficult to parse the thrust of what he was saying.
"Russia, Russia, Russia" => "impeachment hoax" => "and this is their new hoax"
If you feel there's more context needed, feel free to supply it.
The true meaning of "this," much like the true meaning of "covfefe," is not all that important.
As for me, I personally don't believe Trump is so dull and scientifically illiterate as to literally think the virus itself is a hoax. And that's confirmed by the fact he declared it to be a national emergency on March 13. Caveat: If Trump really *did* think that, at any point in time, he needs to be removed from office immediately.
But no: merely labeling the coronavirus "panic" as a hoax isn't a get-out-of-jail free card, either.
6 weeks later, we are in a position to ask: Were the media, Democrats, and everyone else correct to be concerned? Was the "panic" justified?
...
...
...
Well?
In fact, Trump implicitly answered this question himself only two weeks later, again on March 13 when he declared Covid-19 to be a national emergency.
And every other country on earth impacted by this has declared similar measures.
Bottom-line: Covid-19 and/or the panic is in no way a hoax or a conspiracy to unseat him unless he wants it to make it so by continuing to bungle his response.
"Were the media, Democrats, and everyone else correct to be concerned? Was the "panic" justified?"
Oh so now they can predict the future? But when they made the statements they were complaining about Trump's supposedly racist and xenophobic response to the virus. You allege they were concerned about the virus, but they weren't. In fact, during the time of the statements liberal politicians were urging people to "hug Asians" and "come on down to Chinatown" and "eat out and new York City restaurants". Once again your suggestion is patently false.
Saying it's all his fault is the hoax. When he said that - he had ALREADY banned China travel. At the same time, the WHO was STILL saying there was no human-to-human transmission.
Still doing this? Just with another person. Why do you keep repeating this lie, when you know full well it's a lie? You complain about Trump being a habitual liar, yet here you are, being a habitual liar.
"Viruses have no free will, and epidemics can be modeled scientifically. The Trump Administration knew enough about the virus to act and just didn't act"
Well, you say you believe Dr. Fauci, and Fauci was involved in the decisions taken from the beginning. He recently stated in an interview that the United States was given bad information regarding the virus being only transmissible from animals to humans and not human to human.
Therefore your entire premise is false. We didn't know hardly enough about the virus.
To the extent it can be shown that Dr. Fauci was involved in failing to act early, then I'd blame him, too.
But the rifts between Dr. Fauci and Trump have been open and obvious and were re-opened again on Sunday. I'm not convinced whatever was going on behind the scenes in terms of the American response can be laid at Fauci's feet.
And as Harry Truman stated when it comes to being President: "The Buck Stops Here." Trump doesn't say that. He says things like, "I don't take responsibility at all."
That doesn't make Harry Truman's statement any less applicable to Trump as President of the United States.
We didn't know everything about the new coronavirus, and still don't, probably.
But somehow, South Korea got enough information to act and to act early. I have no reason to believe the U.S. lacked access to the same information at the same exact time. The first confirmed case in both countries was detected on same day: Jan. 20, 2020. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/covid-19-discovered-us-south-korea/
They acted, we didn't. The results of the differing approaches have been discussed in multiple news reports and can be seen in this chart that is updated every day. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
(Caveat: As you can see, our infection rates per capita are comparable to a lot of European countries, but I like to compare ourselves to South Korea because I believe America can, and should, be the best in the world.)
Why didn't we act on time?
Was it Trump's fault? Dr. Fauci's? Someone else's? I have already stated I side with Truman's premise that "the buck stops here" with the President. It's a good place to start, but I'm open to being contradicted.
All I know for sure at this point is that books and books will be written on this crisis in the future -- to add to the hundreds of news reports that have already been written -- and in the meantime, there will be a whole lot of pointing of fingers, because it's already safe to say this is the biggest story of the century.
1. South Korea is a smaller country, almost equivalent to the size of Indiana, making it easier to track infected people
2. South Korea has a denser population, about 51.64 million people, in the state of INDIANA which has about 6.732 million people (as of 2019)
3. "The Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) in South Korea imposes strict compliance requirements on entities that collect any information that could be used to identify a specific person. Individuals also have the right to be forgotten, among other data ownership rights." (https://blogs.thomsonreuters.com/answerson/south-korea-covid-19-data-privacy/)
And just like that, we once again see Kyliefan's rampant duplicity. He believes Fauci only when he sees an opportunity to use Fauci as a means to blame Trump. But doesn't believe Dr Fauci when he clearly says the response was not Trump's fault, rather the US received bad information from the international medical experts.
If you've been paying attention to my memes lately, then you'd know I've been praising Dr. Fauci, especially since he recently reported this bit of good news which should cheer the heart of any American following this issue.
And also tentatively beginning to praise Trump, because it appeared they'd smoothed over their differences behind the scenes. See: My OP Meme above and also this meme:
Trump just upended all that by retweeting this nonsense on Sunday. See reposted tweet above.
So, yeah. My optimism in believing Trump had righted the course on his Covid-19 response was short-lived
The White House has stated in response to this post, that Fauci is not being fired.
Trump doesn't have a history of saying he will fire someone. He just does it. If the white house says Fauci is not going anywhere, then Fauci isn't going anywhere.
(Fauci is right, by the way -- more lives could have been saved had Trump acted earlier)
From the linked article:
"The message Mr. Trump retweeted came from a former Republican congressional candidate. 'Fauci is now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he could’ve saved more lives,' said the tweet by DeAnna Lorraine, who got less than 2 percent of the vote in an open primary against Speaker Nancy Pelosi last month. 'Fauci was telling people on February 29th that there was nothing to worry about and it posed no threat to the US at large. Time to #Fire Fauci.'"
So: Looks like we're in for another round of panicking over whether Trump will now give into his baser instincts and dismiss Fauci, or whether this is all just an act for Trump's rabid fanbase.
Personally, I think it's the latter, and Trump wouldn't actually dare follow through with dismissing Dr. Fauci, who's very popular, in the middle of a crisis.
I think Trump is just sending a warning shot to Dr. Fauci against saying anything in public that would damage his re-election chances.
He could have saved more live if he did act earlier, but data is repeatedly changing every week. Last week the recommended distance was 6 ft apart. This week it is 13 ft. Everyone didn't know much about the virus then as we do now. The W.H.O. said in a tweet on January 14 that there was no evidence of person-to-person transmission. And they lied. The W.H.O. would declare the virus a global pandemic about two months later. You can't act "early" or "late" when you don't have the correct information you need. That goes for President Trump and Dr. Fauci.
"So: Looks like we're in for another round of panicking over whether Trump will now give into his baser instincts and dismiss Fauci, or whether this is all just an act for Trump's rabid fanbase."
Don't quit your day job, predicting the future is not your game.
" President Trump is not firing Dr. Fauci," said spokesman Hogan Gidley in a statement, adding "Dr. Fauci has been and remains a trusted advisor to President Trump.""
We all know Trump has not a single problem firing people, and you know this as well. In fact you recently made a meme about Trump's proclivities for terminating those in his employ.
""You know I don't know where the missteps went, the only thing I know what the end result was, that early on we did not get correct information," Fauci said. "And the incorrect information was propagated right from the beginning because you know when the first cases came out, that were identified I think on December 31st in China and we became aware of this, they said this was just animal to human period."
So the international medical experts are clearly who Fauci blames for any response issues.
Another crewmember in Trump’s rotating cast of paid shills I suppose
(See above meme = Actual footage of paid shills caught in the wild! Fascinating!)
Now: as for Mr. Gidley’s statement of today: “President Trump is not firing Dr. Fauci”...
lolllllllll
Riddle me this: Is that the kind of statement spokespeople put out when there is *no* question that the official in question could be about to be fired, or if there *is* such a question?
