Let’s be frank, Americans knew from the moment the very first coronavirus case was announced that Donald Trump would botch this nation’s efforts against this deadly pandemic and make a terrible, fatal situation that much worse. And that is exactly what he did. We have known all along that the blame for the public health crisis that went down and is continuing to go down in the United States rests at the feet of Donald Trump and Donald Trump alone.
But as it turns out, we weren’t the only ones who knew that the now ex-president was at fault for such a massively disastrous response to this deadly illness. The State Department knew too.
POLITICO recently obtained an unreleased State Department’s draft COVID-19 Interim Review and published excerpts showing that the State Department blames Donald Trump and his administration’s handling of the pandemic for the “delayed” warnings to the American people and a “void of U.S. international leadership.”
According to the excerpts, diplomats, as well as other career agency officials, expressed their frustration with then-President Donald Trump’s leadership and responses during a time of nationwide crisis.
Stay up-to-date with the latest news!
Subscribe and start recieving our daily emails.
The unreleased draft document reportedly asserts that it was Trump’s withdrawal from international forums that weakened the United States’ global leadership position when it came to responding to the worldwide pandemic.
According to the POLITICO report, State Department officials not only “identified the void of U.S. international leadership” as early as March 2020, but also pushed for better global engagement, citing the US’s role in the 2014 response to Ebola.
The draft document notes, however, “Instead, an over-emphasis on China’s responsibility for the pandemic led to a backward-looking focus on assigning blame for the virus, which Department research later showed was an ineffective approach to messaging, as the United States repeatedly appeared unwilling to take on greater international leadership to confront the pandemic.”
The draft goes on to reference Trump’s clear attempts to downplay the severity of the virus in the early days of the pandemic. A move he claimed was an effort to avoid a “frenzy,” according to the tapes from his interview with Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward.
“[T]he decision to reassure Americans of their safety and avoid damaging the economy delayed warnings to American citizens about travel during a pandemic until well after airlines were cutting flights and borders were closing around the world,” POLITICO reports the document says.
The draft goes on to note, “The United States’ struggle to contain the virus, strident criticism of the World Health Organization (WHO) and other multilateral institutions, and the politicized internal debate on science and mitigation measures undermined international trust in U.S. leadership.”
This report comes just short of one year since Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization.
You can read the full report here.
Featured image via Political Tribune gallery
