President Donald Trump sat on his hands and did nothing when the United States Intelligence Community (USIC) warned him in advance in January of the dire effects the COVID-19 pandemic would inflict on the U.S. people and the economy.
He also denied the immense threat COVID-19 posed to U.S. national security in favor of believing information provided by Chinese President Xi Jinping the virus would miraculously dissipate in a few months, according to a stunning expose by The Washington Post. The story also revealed USIC told Trump about the effects of the global spread of the coronavirus and China's apparent downplaying of its severity.
Top USIC officials told Trump the federal government had to immediately implement policies and other measures to contain the disease's spread. The story said Trump's reaction to the USIC report was to dismiss it and not address its seriousness.
"Donald Trump may not have been expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were -- they just couldn't get him to do anything about it," said a top USIC official quoted by the Post. "The system was blinking red."
Congressional intelligence committees were also briefed by USIC on the threat COVID-19 posed in January and February, said sources to CNN. The USIC briefings tracked the spread of the virus in China and other countries. USIC experts also said Chinese officials were minimizing the impact of COVID-19 on their country.
The Post said some of Trump's aides failed to convince him of COVID-19's seriousness. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar was only able to talk to Trump about the coronavirus on January 18, said two senior administration officials. Trump then refused to talk about COVID-19 with Azar, and instead asked the latter when sales of flavored vaping products would resume.
In late January, a number of Trump's aides met with former acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to try and convince top White House officials to monitor the coronavirus. White House Domestic Policy Council Director Joe Grogan is said to have declared that if the White House didn't seriously address the virus and its spread, Trump might lose his reelection, said the Post.
Mulvaney subsequently held regular meetings about the virus and its progress but Trump still didn't take the virus seriously because he didn't think it had circulated extensively in the United States. In one particularly infamous remark, Trump after the USIC briefing said on January 30, "We only have five people (infected). Hopefully, everything's gonna be great. They have somewhat of a problem. But hopefully, it's all gonna be great."
Almost a month later on February 25, when there were 53 confirmed cases in the U.S., Trump said, "The coronavirus, which is very well under control in our country. We have very few people with it. People are getting better."
As of Saturday evening (March 21) on the East Coast, the U.S. is now the third most COVID-19 infected country in the world, based on data from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. has 25,493 confirmed cases compared to China (number one on the infection list) with 81,305 and Italy with 53,578 cases. The total confirmed cases as of this time worldwide were 304,526.
On Saturday, Trump slammed China for allegedly not telling him earlier about COVID-19 despite this warning having been given to him by USIC in January.
"I wish they could have told us earlier about what was going on inside," said Trump. "We didn't know about it until it started coming out publicly."
Trump also said China "was very secretive and that's unfortunate."
