One of the people closed to Donald Trump warned him about the threat that the coronavirus posed to the lives of the American people as early as January.
The warning, written in a memo by Peter Navarro, President Trump’s trade adviser, is the highest-level alert known to have circulated inside the West Wing as the administration was taking its first substantive steps to confront a crisis that had already consumed China’s leaders and would go on to upend life in Europe and the United States.
“The lack of immune protection or an existing cure or vaccine would leave Americans defenseless in the case of a full-blown coronavirus outbreak on U.S. soil,” Mr. Navarro’s memo said. “This lack of protection elevates the risk of the coronavirus evolving into a full-blown pandemic, imperiling the lives of millions of Americans.”
Navarro’s warning is a new piece of evidence that Trump was told months in advance about the dangers posed by the coronavirus, but he did nothing to prepare the country for a pandemic. The President’s refusal to take the threat seriously has resulted in hundreds of thousands of illnesses and tens of thousands of American deaths.
Trump was warned by the U.S. intelligence community months in advance. The President wasted 70 days when he should have been preparing the nation for what was coming. Instead, he spent that time calling the coronavirus a hoax and promising that it would “wash away” when the weather got warmer.
Donald Trump continues to try to manage the coronavirus as a public relations problem.
The pandemic was preventable, but Trump didn’t listen, and now innocent Americans are sick and dying by the thousands each day.
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Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
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