The war being waged by president Donald Trump against state governors that are members of the opposition Democratic Party over the shortage of ventilators used for COVID-19 patients and other supplies is part of Trump's effort to deflect away blame for his bungled response to the pandemic and blame others for these shortcomings.
On Friday, Trump said he can't assure New York State will have enough ventilators to deal with its massive numbers of COVID-19 patients. The U.S. still leads the world in the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases and has the third largest number of deaths after Italy and Spain.
His spat with New York governor Andrew Cuomo has been going on for weeks and Trump now claims Cuomo should have bought more ventilators even before COVID-19 appeared in China in December 2019. Trump's continuing effort to avoid accepting responsibility for his failed response to the pandemic goes back to January 21 when the first COVID-19 case in the U.S. was confirmed.
Below is a timeline of Trump's consistent stand denying the dangers COVID-19 presents to his country:
January 22.
Told about first case of COVID-19 in Washington State, Trump was asked by a reporter: "Are you worried about a pandemic?"
Trump replied, "No, we're not at all. We have it totally under control. One person coming in from China."
January 30
Six confirmed U.S. cases and the day when the first case of person-to-person transmission in U.S. was confirmed.
"We only have five people (infected),"said Trump. "Hopefully everything's gonna be great. They have somewhat of a problem. But hopefully it's all gonna be great."
February 10
"The virus. They're working hard. Looks like by April ... in theory, when it gets warmer it miraculously goes away. Hope that's true but we're doing great in our country."
February 15
"We have a very small number of people in the country right now with it. It's like around 12. Many of them are getting better. Some are fully recovered already."
February 25
53 confirmed cases.
"The coronavirus, which is very well under control in our country. We have very few people with it. People are getting better."
February 26
56 confirmed cases.
"Because of all we've done, the risk to the American people remains very low, We have the greatest experts in the world. Really in the world. We've got tremendous success ... tremendous success beyond what people would have thought."
February 28
60 confirmed cases.
"Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. Coronavirus. And so far, we have lost nobody to coronavirus in the United States. Nobody. And it doesn't mean we won't and we are totally prepared."
February 29
67 confirmed cases, 1 death.
"Our country is prepared for any circumstance.We hope its not gonna be a major circumstance ... but whatever the circumstance is, we're prepared.
March 5
161 confirmed cases, 11 deaths.
"You can't be a politician and shake hands... I'll be shaking hands with people. They wanna shake your hand. They wanna say hello. They wanna hug you. They wanna kiss you. I don't care. You have to do that.
March 6
227 confirmed cases, 14 deaths.
"I think were doing a really good job in this country of keeping it down. We've really been very vigilant and we've done a tremendous job in keeping it down."
The U.S. had 311,635 confirmed cases, or 26% of the world total of 1,202,433 cases, according to Worldometer, as of 03:55 GMT on April 5 (11:55 a.m. April 5 in Hong Kong). The U.S. also reported 8,454 deaths, or 13% of the 64,387 total world deaths. On March 5, the U.S. had only 161 cases and 11 deaths.
