#FiveYearsAgoToday #AreWeGreatYet
April 18, 2020 – Trump faulted Democratic governors for not doing enough to test people for COVID-19.
“They don’t want to use all of the capacity that we’ve created,” he said in a briefing. “We have tremendous capacity.”
#FiveYearsAgoToday #AreWeGreatYet
April 17, 2020 – Trump used Twitter to call on protesters to challenge governors’ stay-at-home orders.
“LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” and “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” he wrote about two states that mandated social-distancing restrictions. He also urged Virginians to resist stricter gun-control measures in that state, writing, “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!”
#FiveYearsAgoToday #AreWeGreatYet
April 15, 2020 – As a result of waiting for months to obtain N95 respirator masks, the Trump administration paid companies $5 per mask — almost eight times what the price was earlier in the year.
#FiveYearsAgoToday #AreWeGreatYet
April 14, 2020 – Trump said that he would cut off U.S. payments to the World Health Organization, claiming that the WHO engaged in a coverup of the outbreak in its early days in China. “We have not been treated properly,” he said of the organization.
#FiveYearsAgoToday #AreWeGreatYet
April 13, 2020 – Trump held a 2½-hour news conference in which he attacked the press. “You know you’re a fake,” he told one reporter. “Everything we did was right,” he said.
1/2
#FiveYearsAgoToday #AreWeGreatYet
April 13, 2020 – The Treasury Department ordered that Trump’s name appear on the $1,200 stimulus checks that millions of Americans were to receive.
1/2
#FiveYearsAgoToday #AreWeGreatYet
April 12, 2020 – “Time to #FireFauci” read a message that Trump retweeted after the nation’s top infectious disease expert said fewer Americans would have died had the country gone under lockdown earlier. Trump didn’t only go after Fauci; in a series of tweets, he condemned, China, the World Health Organization, and President Obama.
#FiveYearsAgoToday #AreWeGreatYet
April 11, 2020 – Trump refused to help the U.S. Postal Service, arguing that it needed to raise its rates for Amazon and other private shippers. If the $2 trillion coronavirus relief bill contained any money to help the USPS, Trump said that he would veto the act, according to an administration official.
1/2
#FiveYearsAgoToday #AreWeGreatYet
April 9, 2020 – Defying health experts, Trump rejected the notion that more people needed to be tested for the coronavirus before the U.S. economy could be restarted.
“Do you need it?” he asked about testing. “No. Is it a nice thing to do? Yes.” He added, “We’re talking about 325 million people. And that’s not going to happen, as you can imagine.”
#FiveYearsAgoToday #AreWeGreatYet
April 7, 2020 – Trump blamed the World Health Organization for what he called its slow response to the pandemic.
The WHO, however, warned of a “public health emergency of international concern” weeks before
Trump declared a national emergency. “They called it wrong,” he said. “They really, they missed the call.”
#FiveYearsAgoToday #AreWeGreatYet
April 7, 2020 – Trump ousted the chairman of a watchdog panel that oversaw how the Trump administration managed $2 trillion in coronavirus relief.
Glenn Fine, the acting Pentagon inspector general, was chosen in March to head the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee.
1/2
#FiveYearsAgoToday #AreWeGreatYet
April 6, 2020 – Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro warned the White House as early as January that the coronavirus posed a great threat to the United States.
1/2
#FiveYearsAgoToday #AreWeGreatYet
April 5, 2020 – The U.S. stockpiled 29 million hydroxychloroquine pills, even though health experts doubted its efficacy and warned about its dangerous side effects.
Trump pushed for hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19. “What do I know?” he said at a news briefing. “I’m not a doctor. But I have common sense.”
#FiveYearsAgoToday #AreWeGreatYet
April 4, 2020 – After Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, confirmed there was no evidence that hydroxychloroquine could fight the coronavirus — or that it was safe — Trump said he was considering it for himself. “I may take it, OK? I may take it," he said. “And I’ll have to ask my doctors about that, but I may take it.”
#FiveYearsAgoToday #AreWeGreatYet
April 2, 2020 – Jared Kushner, a White House adviser and Trump’s son-in-law, asserted that the Strategic National Stockpile of ventilators and medical supplies was “supposed to be our stockpile — it’s not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use.”
1/2
#FiveYearsAgoToday #AreWeGreatYet
April 1, 2020 – In an interview on CNN, Mike Pence said Trump had never “belittled” the coronavirus threat.
Trump made the same argument at his daily briefing. “I knew how bad it was,” he said. Both statements contradicted what Trump had said in the past, as when he claimed on Jan. 22 that “we’re not at all” worried about the virus.
“And we have it totally under control.”
#FiveYearsAgoToday #AreWeGreatYet
March 31, 2020 – Trump said his impeachment “probably” diverted his attention from dealing with the crisis more swiftly, a claim first made by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “Did it divert my attention?” Trump said. “I think I’m getting A-pluses for the way I handled myself during a phony impeachment. Okay? It was a hoax. But certainly, I guess, I thought of it.”
#FiveYearsAgoToday #AreWeGreatYet
March 29, 2020 – Trump said that as many as 2.2 million Americans could have died “if we didn’t do what we’re doing.”
He added that if the U.S. was able to limit COVID-19 deaths to between 100,000 and 200,000 people, “we altogether have done a very good job.”
#FiveYearsAgoToday #AreWeGreatYet
March 30, 2020 – The New York Times noted that "President Trump is a ratings hit. Since reviving the daily White House briefing, Mr. Trump and his coronavirus updates have attracted an average audience of 8.5 million on cable news, roughly the viewership of the season finale of The Bachelor.”
Trump quoted this in a tweet adding, “The numbers are continuing to rise…”
#FiveYearsAgoToday #AreYouBetterOff
March 27, 2020 – Trump singled out the governors of Michigan and Washington for not being sufficiently grateful for federal government aid during the pandemic.
“I want them to be appreciative,” he said. “If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call.”
