The Full Story of Trump and COVID-19 | NowThis

[Music] you have 15 people and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero [Music] whatever happens we're totally prepared [Music] it's going to disappear one day it's like a miracle it will disappear i'd rate it attend i think we've done a great job in the first three months of 2020 the coronavirus hit nearly every country in the world but the united states quickly became the center of the outbreak we were and are number one number one in total infections number one in deaths the trump administration would like us to believe that the coronavirus was unexpected like a natural disaster or surprise attack but that's not the truth we've had multiple outbreaks with chronic viruses previously in 2002 we had sars in 2012 we had mers both coronaviruses we know they spread person-to-person we know that they can be contagious so this idea that it came out of nowhere is is really nonsense we do have a pandemic plan for the u.s what we know what little we know about this coronavirus so far is that it appears to be spread most often from droplets say sneezing and coughing the president has made clear that we have a responsibility to prepare our nation for future threats at some point we are likely to face another pandemic the norfolk coronal virus is a threat to the entire world and likely will come a time in which we have both an airborne disease that is deadly the truth is a major pandemic in the early part of this century was likely this administration is constantly acting like it's surprised about the fact that a pandemic spreads across 50 states and kills people that was what we always knew i mean that's why there had been pandemic preparedness plans and planning and exercises and training and all the stuff that a federal government is supposed to do to prepare the public and cities and states for what they're likely to encounter if a pandemic hits the united states congratulations mr president [Applause] america will start winning again winning like never before the trump administration's first real warning came the week before he took office obama's outgoing team and trump's senior staff held a meeting to assess whether the u.s would be prepared to handle a pandemic probably 60 people in the room 30 outgoing officials 30 incoming officials we handed them a copy of the pandemic playbook and we walked through three different scenarios of what could happen one was a hurricane one was a cyber attack and the third was a pandemic and those three scenarios were chosen because those were considered the most likely the group determined that shortages in ppe and medical supplies like ventilators would make it hard to contain an outbreak of an infectious respiratory disease and then as a result of that there was a series of documents that was given to them including a pandemic playbook that spelled out really step by step how to deal with that crisis within his first 100 days in office trump was briefed on the pandemic playbook which represents years of institutional knowledge trump was also given the cdc's pandemic influenza plan its warnings were again clear there are critical shortages in national supply stockpiles over the next three years the warnings kept coming but the white house did nothing if we look back at american history it is close to impossible to find an example of a president who's so disdained expert opinion and good advice one of the signature features of this administration has been a mistrust of expertise a mistrust of the career professionals in the government that has been true in across the state department the intelligence agencies why that is and where it comes from i will leave to political scientists to discuss for three years the white house had been ignoring warnings from experts and predecessors it had also been dismantling the federal system designed to protect us from global pandemics that system is made up of federal agencies that work together across 50 states and it needs resources coordination and good leadership to function well during a fast-moving outbreak on his second full day in office trump put in place a federal hiring freeze critical government positions in the federal pandemic response system remained vacant some for months others for years 18 months into office trump had only appointed 25 of 83 science-based positions trump also pushed out his most senior pandemic experts you're fired you're fired you're fired i'm a business person i don't like having thousands of people around when you don't need them tom bossert the president's homeland security advisor had pressed the white house to develop a thorough pandemic strategy in april 2018 posits team was eliminated and he resigned in protest the next day tim ziemer the director of the national security council's global health security and biodefense unit was considered the top white house official in charge of the u.s response to a pandemic in may 2018 ziemer who had served both bush and obama was demoted his team was dissolved and he later resigned and you've got a president who's denigrated career officials as the deep state he's forced many of them out uh he's silenced many of them and he's pointed people to run these agencies uh people who owe their loyalty strictly to him uh and who have no incentive to tell him the truth and when you have the combination of those two factors that's difficult to run government even in the best of times nowhere was trump's distrust of expertise and institutional knowledge more apparent than in his approach to the cdc the cdc leads u.s pandemic preparedness and response it tracks and studies infectious diseases and it works with other agencies at the federal and local levels to respond to outbreaks and keep the public informed the role the cdc plays is they go out immediately they talk to people that are sick the people that are caring for them public health officials and then they try to figure out their patterns how infectious is this how long does this take to spread they put out reports they give out suggestions policy recommendations those are all the things that a functioning cdc does and they do it very very well with good leadership in every year he's been in office trump has called for cdc budget cuts bigger than any presidential proposals in more than two decades he proposed deep cuts in 2017 in 2018 in 2019 and even in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic none of these got through congress but he had other ways in 2018 trump successfully reallocated more than 260 million dollars from public health programs to a program called unaccompanied alien children but just our reflection of our society's priorities and when you've got a president who has consistently tried to cut spending on public health that demonstrates that it's not a priority trump also removed the strategic national stockpile from the cdc's oversight for the first time in 20 years the stockpile is a repository of critical medical supplies for when states run low in emergencies one of the many reasons for the bungled response and the poor preparedness for them this pandemic was that sometime in 2018 the strategic national stockpile was moved from cdc's management to washington for so-called efficiencies the cdc's presence in hotspot countries like china is particularly important the agency is our eyes and ears on the ground over the last three years the cdc team based in china shrunk from 47 staffers to 14 and in september of last year our blind spot got even bigger the trump administration ended a 200 million dollar pandemic early warning program called predict which focused on monitoring emerging diseases in china and other high-risk countries there's a phrase a drop of prevention is worth a pound of cure and that's exactly the case here we have been for the past few decades working towards a better global system of identifying threats early on and notifying everybody when those threats happen it's very similar to an alarm system in your house very recently we've been basically dismantling that alarm system piece by piece and when you do that through eroded relationships and slashing budgets what that causes or allows is viruses like copper 19 to go unchecked and now they're on your doorstep and they can wreak havoc in a way that they otherwise couldn't [Music] with the growing threat of a highly contagious virus the country needed a president who values scientific expertise who pays attention who plans ahead but we were out of luck and utterly unprepared as the worst global outbreak in a century was landing on our shores [Music] by the first days of january experts around the world were learning of mysterious virus coming out of china the disease could be contagious symptoms similar to pneumonia the double age or not ruling out a corona virus it was an entirely new highly contagious strain of coronavirus many times more lethal than the common flu [Music] and there was no vaccine it's odorless you can't see it you don't know how it kills how it kills it's absolutely terrifying because it takes hold of your lungs and you're you're basically suffocating china's health commission is warning the ability of the deadly coronavirus to spread is getting stronger spreading across asia the virus has now reached europe this virus is going to spread and spread quickly over the next week with an increasing number of patients confirmed across the globe it wasn't a question of if it would hit the u.s but when [Music] in the face of a pandemic there's a critical window to act if you miss it containment becomes exponentially more difficult this disease was spreading and doubling roughly every three days in the u.s in the early part of the pandemic that means that you know within a week it's you know times four it's four times bigger within eight weeks it's now if you multiply that out it's about a hundred thousand times bigger or more if you lose the early ground game and community transmission gets underway it gets enormously harder to use the tools of testing and contact tracing to clamp down transmission between january and march we had a chance to contain the virus we had the experts we had the resources we had the playbook but we needed swift coordinated action and a real leader at the very top throughout january more than a dozen presidential daily briefings warned trump about the threat trump's administration should be building a massive testing and tracing program and making sure we have enough supplies it should be coordinating a 50-state response but in times of crisis donald trump has his own playbook deny it's a whole big fat hoax distract we now call it spygate politicize i hate the children being taken away the democrats have to change their law that's their law and in january trump's denial is on full display we're in great shape we have it totally under control he is refusing to take the pandemic seriously and his people are falling in line by ignoring it the way a pandemic works it's like you know just like you're watching a category 5 hurricane offshore and you're just going like this with cases starting to climb around the world the full month of january passes without any real action from the administration we think it's going to have a very good ending for us so that i can assure you in the absence of a vaccine the single most important tool for defense is testing it tells you how the virus is spreading who needs to be isolated and where to send extra supplies so there are a number of delays that happened the first was that we decided to to use a american-made testing protocol versus the existing one that was already ready to go made by germany but right away there's a problem the american-made tests are defective trump has options he can immediately request testing kits from the who he can mobilize private sector labs which are eager to make their own he does neither and the clock is ticking if we had taken that german test and gotten it out there with contact tracing we would not have had to shut down the country meanwhile the white house is desperately trying to sell the public on a fantasy well we pretty much shut it down a lot of people think that goes away in april we have contained this this president has this under control because of all we've done the risk to the american people remains very low a ninth person has tested positive in the uk 66 more people are now confirmed to have the virus those infected in hubei has soared by almost 15 thousands from cases worldwide at more than 43 000 and if the world doesn't want to wake up and consider this virus as public enemy number one i don't think we will learn from our lessons despite the growing concern trump has other priorities just days after the w.h.o stark message trump hits the campaign trail for the first of six rallies over the next three weeks where he barely mentions the virus the best is yet to come late february trump has said nothing about death rates social distancing or shutdowns that will soon impact americans daily lives but a preview is playing out overseas yesterday two italians were the first europeans to die from the virus italy starts locking down doctors warn americans the virus could hit us even harder and soon the only way to prevent a healthcare system collapse is to enforce a lockdown as soon as possible top white house advisors are scrambling to get the president's attention they know that without adequate testing social distancing and lockdowns are the only ways to slow the outbreak they need to convince trump to prepare americans for drastic measures february 14th the national security council sends a memo warning of widespread closures and isolation which trump ignores february 21st top officials schedule an urgent meeting with the president to push for aggressive social distancing and fast but it never happens february 25th a top cdc official gets trump's attention publicly contradicting him i understand this whole situation may seem overwhelming and that disruption to everyday life may be severe but these are things that people need to start thinking about now the stock market goes into free fall [Music] furious trump puts mike pence in charge of the coronavirus task force it's a move so abrupt the top white house staff hear about it for the first time on tv and we will get through this together thank you more than three weeks will pass before trump calls for social distancing measures experts will determine that if he had implemented these measures by march 2nd if he had listened to his own team 90 of the deaths in the u.s could have been prevented everybody's complimenting me saying thank you very much you're 100 correct and so far we have lost nobody to coronavirus in the united states nobody tonight the governor of washington declaring a state of emergency breaking news the first death from coronavirus here in the united states a man in his 50s dying in washington state in early march the message coming out of the white house starts to change now we're shifting into a mitigation phase we don't have enough tests today uh to meet what we anticipate will be the demand going forward but trump is doubling down the obama administration made a decision on testing and that turned out to be very detrimental now the democrats are politicizing the coronavirus you know that corona virus and this is their new hoax his priority isn't american lives but how the economy looks in an election year i think where these people are flying it's safe to fly some of them go to work but they get better we're up to the doctors they may say let's keep it shut down let's shut down the entire world because again you can't do that with a country especially the number one economy anywhere in the world by far this was a president seeing the warning signs of a pandemic 911 and telling the american public the opposite telling them to go on with their lives telling them it was contained telling them that they didn't need to change their behavior right and you think of all the things that were happening during that period from travel from large gatherings the mardi gras was allowed to go forward in late february when san francisco was already thinking about closing up i mean you just that to me is the malfeasance that's unique to this administration's response he's also promising a warp speed timeline for a vaccine without any basis in science they can have vaccines i think relatively soon over the next few months do you think you could have a vaccine certainly for sure a vaccine is not going to help us now next month the month after meanwhile the need for supplies like ventilators and ppe is getting more dire by the day healthcare workers afraid they will have no way to protect themselves i've got my mass and i'm guarding it with my life because it could be my life but trump doesn't seem worried just a few weeks prior the u.s exported 17 tons of medical supplies to china we could have required that u.s manufacturers make more ppe sooner we could have mandated that we start recycling ppe there is a national stockpile and there's a lot of debate about how that national stockpile should get used what should have happened is that stockpile should have gone immediately to the cities in most need so you basically had january february maybe mid-march 10 weeks in which you're not doing anything right as a government you're not preparing your first responders you're not protecting your medical community you're not talking to governors and mayors that they should begin to close things down and you're not communicating to the american public you know what this could be really bad trump has other concerns the grand princess today finally slipping under the golden gate bridge and into san francisco's harbor the first week of march trump learns that a cruise ship off the coast of california has infected passengers and they're desperate to dock he wants to keep them on board i like the numbers being where they are i don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault and his administration is still misleading the public anybody that needs a test gets a test they're there people should not say if you want to test you go get a test right now when people need a test they can get a test i still do not have a rapid diagnostic test available we have always been able to meet the full demand we've under invested in the public health lab aren't enough people there's not enough equipment there's not enough people they're testing ten thousand a day in some countries and we can't get this off the ground this is not good you have president of the united states saying anyone can get a test who wants one you have the new york state department of health saying only patients be admitted to a hospital can get a test because we were so short at that time that the entire new york city area was relying on one laboratory manhattan trump is also hammering the comparison to the common flu view this the same as the flu people die from the flu it is ten times more lethal than the seasonal flu there is a conflict in messaging there is a difference in messaging between what our elected officials are saying and what the scientists and doctors are saying and then the public ends up getting very confused about who it is that they can trust but at this point many americans are taking matters into their own hands shoppers are finding empty shelves long lines and limits on purchases we're finding examples where bottles like this are going for more than fifty dollars hit the world and we're prepared and we're doing a great job with it and it will go away just stay calm march 11th the who announces that covet 19 is now a worldwide pandemic we're deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction by spring break there are still no national social distancing guidelines in the u.s and americans are left to operate as normal if i get corona i get corona at the end of the day i'm not going to let it stop me from partying but the truth is normal is long gone the lights have gone out on broadway the nba has suspended the season the ncaa tournament has been canceled owners are doing what they can to stay afloat millions of college students have been sent home the number of cases soaring overwhelming the city's hospital doctors and nurses are getting sick i don't know i'm even gonna make it this is a war zone patients keep coming one official calling it a disaster that will define a generation [Music] you can lie and you can tweet the wrong things but every community across america is suffering from a pandemic there's no end in sight to the health crisis at least nine states report record increases in cases over the past three days the president united states still does not have a plan for turning this around at first trump blamed china china virus or whatever you want to call it then obama but in the spring he found a new target the states that we direct a statewide order for people to stay at home you've suggested these governors are at fault what more in this time of day i think we've done a great job we will hold the governor's accountable he's got you in a shutdown still this gave him cover to push for reopening without a national plan for containment president trump is pushing ahead with his plan to reopen the country the greatest economy the history of the world and we closed it trump announced the six-week long restriction will not be extended the moment you stop doing the only thing that's working of course the virus is going to start spreading again this guaranteed the painful cycle we're experiencing now open up close down open up a little more close down it's just really frustrating when we look at other countries that have been successful kids are able to go back to school businesses are able to reopen we know that public health is the road map to economic recovery in germany chancellor merkel's clear consistent messaging was critical for its countrywide contact tracing program in south korea the government's coordination with the private sector helped ramp up nationwide testing early and swiftly in new zealand prime minister ardern's strict national lockdown helped stop the spread of the virus in its tracks we have no new cases uh today by june almost every other country was bending its curve cases in the u.s at that time were surging nearly 200 000 people have died of covet 19 in the u.s alone that's three times the american casualties of the vietnam war and over 60 times the death toll of 9 11. more americans have died since february than in any seven month period in u.s history and there's no end in sight they are dying that's true and you ha it is what it is the ultimate responsibility of the president in the united states is to safeguard the well-being of the american people the casualness by which this president is willing to accept american casualties you sort of can't get your head around [Applause] [Music] [Applause] all the sacrifices that people have made all the pain and suffering and death it didn't have to be this way [Music] donald trump was elected on a promise one that only he could deliver this american carnage stops right here and stops right now but then came the virus and with it the undeniable truth faced with the biggest health crisis in a century we have seen what trump's leadership means for america and we have paid the price with our jobs we let go 90 of the staff with our futures nurses are not being protected [Music] with our lives [Music] tragedy was avoidable leadership matters [Music] when you vote [Music] remember that [Music] you

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Id: qOYYUkZG6b8

Length: 31min 24sec (1884 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 06 2020

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