President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that nobody saw this pandemic coming, but it turns out his own trade adviser Peter Navarro wrote a memo warning him back in January that the coronavirus could kill up to 500,000 Americans.
Just yesterday during his latest press conference/campaign rally, Trump said that no one could have predicted that the virus would hit us. It’s an excuse Trump has used frequently to excuse his reckless response to the pandemic. The problem is that there’s a paper trail showing that Trump knew as far back as January that the coronavirus is a real threat and that hundreds of thousands of Americans could die.
According to the New York Times:
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.”
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The memo itself is damning.
“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,” the memo reportedly says. “This lack of protection elevates the risk of the coronavirus evolving into a full-blown pandemic, imperiling the lives of millions of Americans.”
We even know the precise date the memo was written.
“Dated Jan. 29, it came during a period when Mr. Trump was playing down the risks to the United States, and he would later go on to say that no one could have predicted such a devastating outcome,” the Times explained. “In one worst-case scenario cited in the memo, more than a half-million Americans could die.”
Indeed, Trump went golfing and continued holding campaign rallies where he called the virus a “hoax” and urged Americans not to take it seriously. Ten thousand Americans are now dead and over 300,000 have been infected.
The question is did Trump ignore the memo or did his lackeys just not give it to him because he hates bad news?
The memo, which was reviewed by The New York Times, was sent from Mr. Navarro to the National Security Council and then distributed to several officials across the administration, people familiar with the events said. It reached a number of top officials as well as aides to Mick Mulvaney, then the acting chief of staff, they said, but it was unclear whether Mr. Trump saw it.”
Either way, there’s no excuse for Trump not reading this memo. He’s the one who ignores warnings and he’s the one who has created a climate of fear in the White House that makes his officials reluctant to give him things to read, especially if the news is not good.
This is entirely on him and he has the blood of over 10,000 Americans on his hands with more surely to die in the weeks ahead. Back in 2001, former President Bush ignored a memo that warned Osama bin Laden was determined to strike in the United States and that he could use planes to commit a terrorist attack.
Three thousand people died because the warning went unheeded. Now Trump is responsible for an even worse disaster.
Featured image via screen capture
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