Trump owns this Coronavirus carnage. He insisted for months that there was no need to do anything, despite many briefings from experts — many times and for several weeks — about how serious the disease could be to America.
In addition, Trump praised China and its leader on its handling of Coronavirus many times in January and February. (But Trump’s campaign now runs TV ads criticizing complimentary things Biden said about China years and years ago.)
In fact, we have been living through something much, much worse than the (imaginary) “American Carnage” Trump said he would end during his Inaugural speech in January 2017 — when he inherited one of the best economies in the last 50 years.
Remember when he said, during his acceptance speech for the Republican presidential nomination, “I alone can fix it”?
There was no “carnage” that needed “fixing” in 2017.
However, this year, Trump created a massive problem. He has no idea, nor any desire to “fix it.” He said as recently as this week that it will just “go away.” His son Eric insisted — this week — that Coronavirus is a “Democrat hoax” that will “go away” after the November election.
Through January and February, Trump insisted that the United states government had Coronavirus “under control” until evidence became overwhelming the second week of March.
The one thing he insists made a difference was his “China travel ban.” Trump put his “China travel ban,” into effect AFTER the Coronavirus was already well-established in the United States, and after most airlines had already voluntarily stopped US-China air travel. His “travel ban” also allowed more than 40,000 people to travel into the United States from China after the “ban” took effect.
In those months, Trump told many of the biggest and most consequential of the 16,000+ lies he has publicly uttered.
As reported by the New York Times, “If the United States had begun imposing social distancing measures one week earlier than it did in March, about 36,000 fewer people would have died in the coronavirus outbreak, according to new estimates from Columbia University disease modelers.
“And if the country had begun locking down cities and limiting social contact on March 1, two weeks earlier than most people started staying home, the vast majority of the nation’s deaths — about 83 percent — would have been avoided, the researchers estimated.
“Under that scenario, about 54,000 fewer people would have died by early May.”
Indeed, Trump owns this Coronavirus carnage, which has had far worse impact in the United States than necessary. Trump wasted more than two months telling us that it would magically “go away.” Trump also spent more than two months doing nothing significant about it.