So with the election looming Trumps enemies are out in full force looking to exacerbate any possible weakness and this week with the release of tapes recorded by Bob Woodward they have found what they believe are bombs that can take down Trump. There are two main attacks coming from these tapes.
#1 On Feb 7th Trump knew the virus was extremely dangerous and airborne.
The reality is that in January and February no one knew exactly how bad this virus was. Democrats and Republicans alike saw covid as a side story and most of the focus was on the impeachment trials. It's entirely likely that Trump had a belief that the virus was a serious threat as just 7 days prior he had shut down travel to China despite democrats and Joe Biden claiming it was xenophobic to do so. However, what everyone seems to ignore is that even as late as Feb 29th Tony Fauci was telling everyone (and we can assume also the President) that there was not a need to change any of our daily behaviors over the virus.
When you combine that with the fact that the WHO did not even confirm the virus was airborne until July we can conclude that Trump had heard rumor the virus was airborne but that was not confirmed by Dr Fauci or others (unless we are assuming that Dr Fauci also was withholding critical information from the public).
#2 On March 17th Trump stated that he had been downplaying the virus in the previous weeks to avoid a panic.
Go back in your mind to where you were and what you were thinking on March 17th. This was day 2 of the now famous "15 days to slow the spread". Trump was justifying why he had not taken action sooner and his answer was that he did not want to instill panic. This seems perfectly reasonable considering even Dr Fauci did not suggest masks early on because he did not want to create a panic rush on PPE. One of the jobs of the President is to keep people from panic in a crisis. In March 1-16th no one (including Dr Fauci) had a clear vision of where covid was heading or exactly what the nature of the illness was. For Trump to say that he was downplaying things to avoid panic during a time when they were still trying to figure out how serious this was going to be ad while they were formulating their response is honest and frankly what any good leader should do if they are unsure of what exactly is going on.
The reality is that From Jan until about the 2nd week of March most people suspected covid would be just another bird flu or ebola scare. Yes, we had heard it was serious (just like Ebola and bird flu) and Trump knew that as well and took action to keep us safe by shutting down Chinese travel. But to pretend that Trump was recklessly irresponsible when his actions were perfectly in step with Dr Fauci and his team just demonstrates political bias and not an objective analysis of the situation. Hindsight is 20/20 but the reality is that no one knew exactly what covid was going to be and Trumps actions in shutting down travel to china, launching the initial mid march lockdowns of the economy and travel to Europe while initiating the defense production act to get out massive amounts of PPE, ventilators, hospital space, and testing were essentially all the things he had in his power to slow the spread. In a rate moment of honesty, even democrat governors praised his rapid deployment in getting them the things they needed.
Unfortunately political winds change and in the end (as the data has shown) his response has resulted in the US handling the virus about as well as we would have expected when we compare the US with similar large western nations.
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