With a tragic pandemic in our midst, it is sad to see the media and certain publications on our own campus pushing a false narrative of President Trump’s handling of coronavirus. Between coming across a timeline on The Federalist to listening to Congressman Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) explain what Trump has done to watching President Trump’s press briefings to checking information on PolitiFact, I have constantly been learning about coronavirus, and more specifically, our President’s response to it. It is evident people are being misinformed about what Trump has done, what others have done, and the effectiveness of both.
Before I begin, there are two common misconceptions about the Trump administration before the pandemic even began that need to be squashed. First, Trump did not fire the leaders of the Pandemic Response Team nor did he simply disband the group. The senior director of global health and biodefense on the National Security Council was Rear Admiral Timothy Ziemer. He was in charge of the United States’ response to infectious diseases, but after he left the administration in May 2018, John Bolton reorganized the global health team in order to merge similar offices and have them work together. He did get rid of Ziemer’s job position, but it was only after he had left and, therefore, the job was vacant. Many members of the original department stayed on while others left to work in other offices, but Bolton and Trump did not fire the team nor did they simply get rid of having an office ready to face a pandemic. The one aspect of the Trump administration that was not fully prepared for a pandemic was the federal stockpile of PPE, but that was because the Obama administration used most of their reserves during the H1N1 virus and never replenished them. Although they could not foresee the necessity of replenishing, it was their job to do so.
Second, Trump did not cut funding for the Center for Disease Control (CDC). He did propose a smaller budget than the spending from the previous year for zoonotic infectious diseases, a major component for fighting coronavirus. However, Congress, when creating their final spending bills, looks at the president’s suggestion and adjusts accordingly. During the Trump administration, he has signed off on every funding bill, regardless of how different it has been from his proposed amount, and each has surpassed the previous year’s spending. The CDC’s final budget, for example, in 2018 was decided at $575,704,000, while in 2020, the final budget decided was $635,772,000.
In regard to President Trump’s coronavirus response, a claim consistently propagated is that he failed to act fast enough. Trump, many say, was well aware of the threat that coronavirus posed, and yet he did not act, which supposedly caused the death of thousands. This brings about two main points. First, it implies that Trump had information that should have prompted him to take action, and the second that others were acting as quickly as they should have.
The first point is true: Trump did have enough information to take action, and he in fact did, while others strongly disagreed with his actions and did not act. The first patient with coronavirus entered the United States from Wuhan, China on January 15, and before the case was even reported on January 21, Trump began to have screenings in airports for flights coming from Wuhan in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles on January 17. Even after the second case was reported a few days later, the CDC stated, “Based on what we know right now, the immediate risk to America remains low.” Despite this, Trump, a few days later, extended airport screenings to look at twenty different airports across the country with travelers that had visible symptoms, as well as mandating quarantines. It was not until January 30 that the WHO declared coronavirus a national health emergency and that the CDC confirmed, for the first time publicly, that the virus can spread by person-to-person contact. In response to this, Trump created the White House Coronavirus Task Force that same day. The next day, January 31, he declared a public health emergency and implemented a travel ban between the United States and China. Meanwhile, the Senate had a vote on additional documents for the president’s impeachment, Biden accused Trump of hysteria and xenophobia, the WHO criticized Trump saying trade and travel bans are unnecessary, and members of the media accused the Trump administration of an overreaction. Vox tweeted, “Is this going to be a deadly pandemic? No” and The New York Times quoting Dr. Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist, calling Trump’s travel ban “more of an emotional or political reaction.”
On February 4, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was instructed by the Trump administration to establish procedures for coronavirus diagnostic testing. The CDC said they were taking precautions to make sure the risk of contracting coronavirus stayed low, and they continued to emphasize the risk being low all the way through February 18. But, Trump still continued to act in order to protect Americans. Trump raised the warnings of travel to Japan and South Korea to “high” on February 20, and he asked Congress for $2.5 billion to deal with coronavirus on February 25. House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), on the other hand, encouraged people to join her and others in Chinatown on February 24 to celebrate the Chinese New Year, saying “It’s exciting to be here, especially at this time, to be able to be unified with our community. We want to be vigilant about what is out there in other places. We want to be careful how we deal with it, but we do want our people to say, ‘Come to Chinatown, here we are—we’re, again, careful, safe—and come join us.’” Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA), a prominent figure during Trump’s impeachment trial, did not publicly mention coronavirus until February 25, despite being the Chairman of the Intelligence Committee and therefore having similar information about coronavirus as President Trump. With the information at hand, it is understandable why Pelosi and Schiff were not having strong reactions to the coronavirus. The WHO and CDC appeared to not present the virus as a serious threat to Americans, and China had continually lied about the reality of their number of cases, deaths, and overall information about the virus. Only exercising very slight caution is an understandable response at this point.
On February 26, it was confirmed by the CDC there was the first case suspected to be transmitted locally, and Trump chose Vice President Pence to lead the task force, who appointed Dr. Deborah Birx as the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator within a day. The next day, the media and Democrats tried to claim Trump called the coronavirus a hoax. But, his words in question were, “The Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus, you know that right? Coronavirus, they’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say, ‘How’s President Trump doing?’ They go, ‘Oh, not good, not good.’ They have no clue.” He went on to talk about the questions of Trump and Russia and then the “impeachment hoax,” explaining how Democrats have continually gone after him for his actions despite a lack of wrongdoing with Russia and committing no impeachable offenses. When a reporter accused him the next day of calling coronavirus a hoax, he said, “I’m talking [about] what they’re doing. That’s the hoax. That’s just a continuation of the hoax, whether it’s the impeachment hoax or the ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ hoax. This is what I’m talking about. Certainly not referring to this. How could anybody refer to this? This is very serious stuff. But the way they refer to it — because these people have done such an incredible job, and I don’t like it when they are criticizing these people. And that’s the hoax. That’s what I’m talking about.”
President Trump was drawing attention to the fact the Democrats have been accusing him, and therefore the coronavirus task force, of poorly handling the virus, even though he has taken it extremely seriously from the beginning. Their lack of support thus far of his actions only deepen the true hypocrisy of their attacks.
It was not until March 10 that Italy locked down, and the WHO declared coronavirus a worldwide pandemic the next day. In response, Trump put travel restrictions to Europe in place-- an aggressively criticized tactic yet again by Democrats and the media. Biden called this travel ban xenophobic, and some media outlets came out speaking against it implying it would not help, “Coronavirus is already here. Blocking travelers won’t prevent its spread” in Vox, and others claiming he did it for the upcoming election, a Washington Post headline: “Europe blindsided by Trump’s travel restrictions, with many seeing political motive.”
While others continued to insult his decision, Trump then declared a national emergency for the United States. Spain the next day locked down, and soon after, Trump put out Fifteen Days to Slow the Spread then later added Thirty Days to Slow the Spread. He has continued to have daily press briefings with various experts in order to keep the public informed, and he and his team have constant meetings with the governors to help them come up with plans for each of their states.
During all of this, on paper, it appears Trump was acting quickly and effectively. But could he have not done more? If we look at the data given to us, Trump did even more than what would have been expected. There are claims that Peter Navarro, Trump’s trade advisor, informed Trump of the threats of coronavirus and that he ignored the memos. Although Trump says he did not see them, he acted how he should have according to this advice. One memo was sent on January 29th that encouraged a travel ban on China, which Trump did implement on January 31st, and the other was on February 23rd that said the United States would need $3 billion to deal with coronavirus and on February 25th, Trump requested $2.5 billion from Congress.
Despite Biden’s criticism of Trump’s travel bans, Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, is now saying, “The bottom line: if Donald Trump had listened to Joe Biden, fewer Americans would be dying, losing loved ones, losing their jobs, or losing their retirement savings.” Dr. Anthony Fauci, in an MSNBC interview in late March said, “One of the things we did right was very early cut off travel from China to the United States,” and Nancy Messonier, director of National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, supported the ban saying, “We believe our aggressive travel precautions are working.” In response to Trump’s European travel ban, Dr. Fauci explained, “Because if you look at the numbers, it’s very clear that 70 percent of new infections in the world are coming from that region [Europe].” He continued, “It was pretty compelling that we needed to turn off the source from that region.” If Trump had listened to Biden’s claims of travel bans being xenophobic, experts such as Fauci, would agree that the number of cases and deaths in the United States would be much higher.
Despite the perceived low threat posed by the WHO, CDC, China, politicians, and the media, President Trump took drastic, necessary steps that have saved many Americans. But, the final major criticism of Trump’s response lies in testing. Trump was quick to look into it, but the CDC had a major issue. When they first were developing tests, China would not give the United States actual samples of the virus, making it significantly more difficult for developing tests. To make matters more difficult, because of FDA regulations in place, private industries were unable to make tests. Fortunately, Trump was able to reverse these regulations so they could. The process changed for labs, as explained by the FDA at the end of February, that their tests would still need to be approved by the FDA, but the labs could still begin testing rather than waiting for the official consent. But, the FDA implemented another change in March. Instead of them being in charge, labs now only had to go to state officials about their development of tests, and there was no longer a need for an Emergency Use Authorization for the tests made.
This poses the question: where does this leave us? The United States cannot afford to simply stay in lockdown until a vaccine is developed. Trump and his team have been doing their job on the federal level. But, it is ultimately now up to the governors to continue to do their part. Trump and his team presented a plan that states should follow with reopening, but each state is different and therefore the governor has to figure out what is best for their own state. The federal government, when states are ready, needs to ween states off federal aid so they can begin reopening on their own. If they need more federal help, they can and should reach out. Trump, from the beginning, has saved countless lives, and if it were not for his actions, it is scary to think about what kind of state the country would be in. But, the cure cannot be worse than the disease, so it is the governors’ turns. They need to get to work on saving their people and saving jobs, just as President Trump has been fighting for since the beginning.