WASHINGTON — Is he a wartime president or a backup point man? President Donald Trump seems to go back and forth on that, or both ways at once, in responding to the coronavirus pandemic that takes more lives by the hour.
In his recent rhetoric, the president who declared “It’s a war” and invoked wartime powers enabling him to direct the production and shipment of critical medical supplies sought to avoid responsibility for persistent shortages. “The federal government,” he told New York’s governor, “is merely a back-up for state governments.” Meantime the government changed its online description of the national stockpile to put state responsibility more front and center.
And after public-health authorities warned that infection and death are spreading at a needlessly fast rate because Americans are not respecting social-distancing guidelines as they should, Trump incongruously asserted we should all be “thrilled” with how that’s going. Separately, he bragged inaccurately about his Facebook followers.
A look at how some statements over the past week compare with the facts:
The threat
TRUMP, on a warning that had just been delivered by Dr. Deborah Birx of the coronavirus task force that more Americans need to heed distancing steps ordered by many states and recommended by Washington: “She wasn’t referring to our country, she was referring to one state.” — briefing Thursday.
THE FACTS: No, she was talking about more Americans overall needing to keep away from each other. More specifically, Birx said the outbreak would not be spreading by now in areas with low infection rates if everyone were following the guidelines. Instead, officials are now seeing cases of people who were infected after the guidelines took effect.
“This should not be happening any longer in new places if people are doing the social distancing, washing their hands, not getting together in large groups more than 10,” she said at the briefing where Trump then tried to tamp down her warning out of his concern about the “headlines tomorrow.”
Birx said: “We see Spain, we see Italy, we see France, we see Germany. When we see others beginning to bend their curves, we can bend ours. But it means everybody has to take that same responsibility as Americans.” Bending the curve means flattening out the rate of increase in cases.
She added: “Yes. There are states that are dead flat. But, you know, every — what changes the curve is a new Detroit, a new Chicago, a new New Orleans, a new Colorado.”
TRUMP: “Four weeks ago, we had the greatest economy in the history of the world. The greatest in the world — greatest in the history of the world.” — briefing Thursday.
THE FACTS: Not true. The economy was healthy back then but not the best in U.S. history, much less world history.
Economic gains largely followed along the lines of an expansion that started more than a decade ago under President Barack Obama. And while posting great job and stock market numbers, Trump never managed to achieve the rates of economic growth he promised in the 2016 campaign. The U.S. economy was not the world’s best in history when this started.
TRUMP, going back to that period four weeks ago: “And then, one day, I get a call from Deborah, who’s fantastic, and from Dr. Fauci. And he said and she said, ‘We have a problem. I said, ’What’s the problem?’ And they said, ‘We may have to close it up.’ I said, ‘Close what up?’ They said, ‘Close up the country.’ And I said, ‘What’s that all about?’” — briefing Thursday.
THE FACTS: You’d think that Trump was just learning about the outbreak from Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health in the phone call. That’s not the case.
Trump knew the U.S. had “a problem” well before that timeline of roughly early March.
By then the U.S. had restricted travel from abroad, experienced its first coronavirus infections and was told to expect the outbreak to spread in the country. The World Health Organization declared a global health emergency Jan. 30.
VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: “I don’t believe the president has ever belittled the threat of the coronavirus.” — CNN interview Wednesday.
MITCH McCONNELL, Senate majority leader: The coronavirus crisis “came up while we were tied down in the impeachment trial. And I think it diverted the attention of the government, because everything, every day was all about impeachment.” — interview Tuesday with radio host Hugh Hewitt.
THE FACTS: While Pence claims Trump always treated the virus threat seriously, McConnell suggests Trump may not have because he was distracted by impeachment. Neither claim is credible.
Trump says he would not have done anything faster on the virus, absent impeachment. And he actually belittled the coronavirus threat repeatedly from January to mid-March, maintaining his position even after the Senate acquitted him Feb. 5 in his impeachment trial. He dismissed the threat as a small number of U.S. cases that were under “control” and would fall to zero by April.
On Feb. 10, he asserted “we’re in great shape ... we have 12 cases” and told Fox Business it will be fine because “in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather. And that’s a beautiful date to look forward to.”
“When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done,” he said Feb. 26. A day later he said: “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear,”
“It’s got the world aflutter, but it’ll work out,” Trump told the National Association of Counties on March 3. Along the way, he said Democrats who were calling on him to do more were perpetuating a hoax.
On March 9, he tweeted the 546 cases and 22 deaths experienced by then in the U.S. were no reason to take drastic steps: “Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on.”
Trump now acknowledges the U.S. could see 100,000 to 240,000 deaths from the pandemic even if current distancing guidelines are maintained. When asked Tuesday if impeachment proceedings had distracted him from the U.S. coronavirus response, he said, “I don’t think I would have acted any differently or I don’t think I would have acted any faster.”
Social media
TRUMP: “I have, you know, hundreds of millions of people. Number one on Facebook. Did you know I was number one on Facebook? I mean, I just found out I’m number one on Facebook. I thought that was very nice for whatever it means.” — news briefing Wednesday.
THE FACTS: It doesn’t mean anything because it’s not true. He’s nowhere close to No. 1.
Trump has 29 million followers on Facebook, far below former President Barack Obama, who has 54 million. Cristiano Ronaldo, the Portuguese soccer player, has 126 million.
Medical supplies
TRUMP: “We’re a backup. We’re not an ordering clerk. We’re a backup.” — briefing Thursday.
THE FACTS: He’s not been completely consistent on what he regards the federal responsibility and his own as president to be.
On one hand, he’s called himself “in a sense, a wartime president,” and maximizes every opportunity to take credit for silver linings in the crisis. But he does not want to be blamed for things that go wrong.
He went to Norfolk, Virginia, to give a presidential send-off to the Comfort, the Navy hospital ship, as it set sail for New York City, where its main function is to house non-COVID-19 patients to relieve pressure on city hospitals.
He tapped the rarely invoked Defense Production Act, though so far he has used it more as a tool of persuasion than as a means to order the private sector to manufacture more of what the country needs. But he has resisted calls to issue a national stay-at-home order and says primary responsibility for emergency supplies belongs to the states.
On Friday, the Health and Human Services Department revised its description of the Strategic National Stockpile to play down its utility in the pandemic. The new wording showed up a day after Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, said the federal stockpile is “supposed to be our stockpile,” meaning the federal government’s. “It’s not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use.””
