Is Trump’s coronavirus response evidence of another cover-up?

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After fears over the coronavirus caused Wall Street to have its worst week since the financial crisis of 2008 and the Great Recession, Trump spend his weekend doing everything in his power to protect his fledgling reelection by desperately searching for someone to blame.

Trump began his “Its not my fault” propaganda weekend at a rally where he accused Democrats of “politicizing the Coronavirus” in order to bring him down for doing “one of the great jobs” as president. This was followed by a replay of his oft-used claim that “Russia, Russia, Russia” and “the impeachment hoax” were failed attempts to best him, and then came full-circle when he called the coronavirus “the “new hoax” of the Democrats.

Since Trump gets many of his talking points from the sycophantic faux-conservative media, blaming Democrats for how the coronavirus is hurting his campaign was a foregone conclusion.

For example, in the days leading up to the rally, two of Trump’s most passionate cheerleaders in the media, Rush Limbaugh and FOX News’ Laura Ingraham, equated the disease that’s taken thousand of lives around the globe to “the common cold,” and claimed that Democrats were “either hoping for misery or actually peddling it.”

Friday was also the day that Donald Trump, Jr., teamed up with daddy’s morning intel team (aka FOX & Friends) to not only blame Democrats for the damage the coronavirus is causing the campaign, but to accuse the Democrats of hoping it “kills millions of people so that they can end Donald Trump’s streak of winning.”

Trump wrapped up the weekend on Sunday with a two-fer where he blamed the “Fake News” media for hyping the coronavirus while repeating his Hitleresque “THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”

You know, without trying to sound like an episode of Alex Jones’ InfoWars, the lengths Trump and his cult are willing to go to assign blame for something allegedly out of his control is beginning to look like a cover-up. Based on this look back at recent events within the White House courtesy of PopularInformation.com, maybe it is.

On May 8, 2018, Trump fired Rear Adm. Tim Ziemer, who was serving on the National Security Council as the Director of Global Health Security. In that position, Ziemer was responsible for coordinating responses to global health emergencies and potential pandemics. Ziemer was praised as “one of the most quietly effective leaders in public health” — his work on malaria during the Obama administration was credited for saving millions of lives.

Instead of replacing Ziemer, Trump eliminated the position. Dr. Luciana Borio, the National Security Council director for medical and biodefense preparedness, left the same month and was not replaced.

So when the coronavirus began spreading globally, there was no one in the White House to coordinate the response. As the outbreak grew more severe, Trump reportedly ruled out appointing someone new to help manage the crisis, “worrying that bringing in a person from outside the administration might be seen as a failure — and wondering whether such a person would be loyal to him.”

This is why Trump put Pence in charge, by the way. Not because he’s an expert in public health, but because he’s a Trump loyalist with his own political future at stake.

Trump is also claiming that the low number of confirmed cases of the disease is proof the threat isn’t that great and his policies are working. However, as we learn again from PopularInformation.com, the facts prove otherwise.

Trump has consistently used the low number of confirmed cases in the United States as proof that his administration’s response is working. (As of this past Sunday, there were 76 confirmed cases in the United States.) But the low number of confirmed cases is a reflection of the small number of tests in the United States. China has the capacity to perform 1.6 million tests per week. As of February 29, only 472 tests have been conducted in the United States.

Things could be changing. The FDA announced a new policy, “giving laboratories and hospitals around the country the go-ahead” to conduct their own tests. On the Sunday talk shows, Pence said that 15,000 testing kits are en route to medical professionals, and the government just signed an agreement with a commercial vendor to produce 50,000 more.

This will likely produce a spike in new confirmed coronavirus cases though it won’t necessarily be an indication that the coronavirus is rapidly spreading in the United States, nor will it necessarily reflect the current scope of the outbreak.

Here’s another inconvenient truth Trump might be trying to cover-up. Even if the tests become more available, millions of people are uninsured or under-insured thanks to Obamacare and the broken promise of Trump and the GOP to repeal it. In the end, people with symptoms might not want to get tested for fear of getting hit with massive medical bills.

Trump isn’t responsible for the coronavirus, but he’s responsible for his decisions and the consequences —  a fact he would prefer to cover-up until after November.

 

David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative.

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1 comment for “Is Trump’s coronavirus response evidence of another cover-up?”

  1. Pingback: Coronavirus hysteria: The end of liberty and the race toward tyranny | The Strident Conservative ™

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