Donald Trump deserves zero credit for fighting Covid

The media last week chided President Biden for not giving Trump partial credit for fighting the pandemic. The media is wrong.

Mar 15, 2021

The media last week chided President Biden for not giving Donald “Covid’s a hoax” Trump enough credit for his handling of the Coronavirus pandemic.

The worst was NBC’s Peter Alexander, who went so far as to draft a statement for the Biden White House to issue, thanking Trump for his glorious work handling the Coronavirus:

There was also this from the New York Times, echoing Republican talking points crediting Trump for the Covid vaccines:

Let’s be clear about this. Even were one to generously give Trump a smidgen of credit for his ludicrously-named “Operation Warp Speed” (an effort to support private sector development of a vaccine) — credit which in fact Biden’s people did offer — Trump at best enabled a vaccine that he then ensured people would never take.

Donald Trump called Covid a hoax, and treated the disease as an annoyance until the day he left office. Trump routinely downplayed the seriousness of the pandemic — and outright lied about it, as the Bob Woodward recordings show — and undercut the science surrounding the pandemic’s severity, spread, and treatment.

As a result, Trump’s own supporters are now the group most likely to refuse the vaccine.

In a new NPR/Marist poll, 47% of Trump supporters say they will refuse to be vaccinated. The only no-vote larger than Trump supporters are Republican men, 49% of whom refuse to be vaccinated — while 41% of Republicans overall refuse to take the vaccine.

Compare that to Biden supporters (10% no), Democratic men (6% no), and Democrats overall (11% no).

Also, while there’s been a lot of talk about vaccine hesitancy in the Black community, only 25% of Blacks say they’ll refuse to take the vaccine, 28% of whites, and 37% of Latinos. Hesitancy is far worse among Trump supporters. Though it’s no wonder. Trump’s Covid disinformation campaign worked wonders. And Fox News, particularly Fox host Tucker Carlson, continues to undercut the vaccines to its Republican audience — as recently as last week.

Of course, it wasn’t just Fox News undermining America’s Covid response, the Republican-media were simply following Trump’s lead. Since NBC and the New York Times seem to have forgotten just how bad Trump was on Covid, let’s take a moment to remind them.

For starters, check out this detailed Trump Coronavirus Timeline that Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) has posted. It’s brutal, while documenting all the lies and effort to downplay the severity of the crisis. I’ll share just a few of the timeline’s highlights:

And that pack of lies only gets us to March of last year.

Remember the interview Trump did with Bob Woodward, where Trump admits that he knew in February of 2020 that Covid was going to be worse than the flu, by far.

Compare that to what Trump said publicly, less than three weeks later:

Trump also admitted to Woodward that he always intended to “play it down,” and mislead Americans about just how dangerous Covid was, and how bad it was going to get:

What else did Trump do, while the American death toll mounted? He called the disease a hoax. Actively undercut health insurance for millions of Americans. Suggested Blue State Covid deaths didn’t count. Mocked masks. At the height of the pandemic, held multiple super-spreader events while the experts were begging Americans not to assemble in groups, thus sending the message that social distancing wasn’t necessary. Encouraged violence against state Covid lockdowns. Politicized the CDC’s recommendations. Publicly undercut Dr. Fauci. Refused to help states coordinate their pandemic response, or support them financially. Pushed untested Coronavirus cures, like hydroxychloroquine. And then lost 20 million doses of the vaccine!

Last, but not least, everyone’s favorite: Trump suggested drinking bleach:

A few weeks ago, we learned that Trump and his wife were vaccinated against Covid in January of this year — while he was still president — but Trump chose to keep it a secret. Imagine the good Trump could have done by televising his vaccination, while urging his followers to do the same. All the other living former presidents — and President Biden — did just that. They filmed their vaccinations and disseminated the video widely, in order to counter vaccine hesitancy. Trump and his wife? Not so much.

A study found that as many as 40% of US Covid deaths were avoidable, had Trump taken the pandemic seriously. That’s several hundred thousand American deaths that didn’t have to happen. And then Trump made sure that his own followers would refuse to take the very vaccine he now wants credit for, creating even more disease and death.

So spare us the talk of how Trump deserves credit for Biden’s success in tackling the virus. What Trump deserves is ignomy.

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