“I don’t take responsibility.”
At a March 13, 2020, White House briefing, President Donald Trump denied any responsibility for the United States’ slow response in combating COVID-19. “Yeah, I don’t take responsibility at all because we were given a set of circumstances, and we were given rules, regulations, and specifications from a different time that wasn’t meant for this kind of an event with the kind of numbers that we’re talking about,” he said.
Yamiche Alcindor, a reporter with the PBS Newshour, asked the president if the White House lost valuable time preparing to combat the COVID-19 outbreak because the White House pandemic office was disbanded by the Trump Administration. “What do you make of that?” Alcidnor asked. “Well, I just think it’s a nasty question….And when you say ‘me,’ I didn’t do it.,” Trump replied. “I don’t know anything about it. I mean, you say — you say we did that. I don’t know anything about it,” Trump said.
“When somebody is president of the United States, the authority is total.”
During an April 13, 2020, press conference, Trump averred he had the constitutional right to direct state governments to re-open, disregarding the 10th Amendment. When asked which provision of the Constitution allowed Trump to re-open a state’s economy, he replied “numerous provisions. We’ll give you a legal brief if you want.”
CNN reporter Kaitlin Collins asked Trump if “any governor agreed that you have the authority to decide when their state opens back up?’ Trump said he hadn’t and asked Collins “you know why?”
“Because no one–no one has said that,” Collins said, to which Trump replied “Because I don’t have to.”
The following day Trump walked back his claim after widespread condemnation from democrats, constitutional scholars, political pundits, and members of his own party. He said he would work with governors to “authorize” re-opening their respective states.
The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 24, 2020
“Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs.”
During his April 23 briefing, Trump said injecting disinfectant might make an effective treatment to combat Coronavirus.
“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning.”
“The backlash was swift” to Trump’s medical insights, The New York Times reported. “A host of corporations, doctors and government officials quickly stepped forward to issue an identical warning: Cleaning products are extremely dangerous to ingest — potentially deadly — and no one should do so.”
On Twitter, #trumplaughingstock trended almost as swiftly.
“I think wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators…I don’t know, somehow, I don’t see it for myself.”
In early April Trump said he wouldn’t don a mask to prevent the spread of COVID-19, despite his wife Melania’s message on Twitter, citing the Center For Disease Control, reminding people to wear “face coverings” in public when social distancing wasn’t possible.
On May 11 two White House staffers tested positive for the Coronavirus, prompting an order requiring masks while working in the White House. The President was exempted from the order.
During his May 21 visit to a Ford manufacturing plant in Michigan, Trump was quoted as saying “I had [a mask] on before. I wore one in the back area. I didn’t want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it,” he said.
“It’s going to be just fine.”
A Vice News video mash-up of President Trump’s assurance that “everything is fine.”
On May 28, the Centers For Disease Control announced COVID-19 deaths in the Unite States topped 100,000 along with 1,698,523 reported cases, the most in world. That same day, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at social media platforms and exempting them from libel protections in reaction to Twitter adding fact-checking labels to two of his tweets regarding voting by mail earlier that week.
The US stock market is slowly clawing its way back after Wall Street’s 11,000-point loss over a one-month period between February and March 2020. Thanks to the COVID-19-stalled economy a surplus of oil in mid-April saw oil futures drop to an unprecedented minus $37 per barrel. And the US job market is staring down an unemployment rate of nearly 20 percent as a result of the coronavirus and stay-at-home orders that closed businesses. That’s about 40 million people out of work.
All this winning…it’s deplorable.
