Thread by @michaelpsenger

Thread – How Donald Trump shut down America: Reexamining Trump’s role in the response to COVID

Trump knew lockdown was a lie. He did it anyway. 1/

On March 13, 2020, Trump began announcing initial lockdown measures.

“This is why I outlined…my administration’s, the fact we’ve issued a requirement suspending all medically unnecessary visits to various places, but particular nursing homes.” 2/

March 13, 2020: Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services quietly issues the initial template for COVID lockdowns. 3/

March 15, 2020: VP Mike Pence explains that the decision to advise lockdowns belongs solely with Trump.

“Everything that the White House Coronavirus Task Force does is at the direction of the President… We’re considering everything and everything.” 4/

March 16, 2020: Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx, and Donald Trump smile as they announce “15 Days to Slow the Spread”—arguably the most destructive domestic policy ever implemented in the United States. 5/

March 16, 2020: Trump explains the details of “15 days to slow the spread.” 6/

After lockdowns went into effect, unemployment in the US soared as high as 14.7% and highways were jammed with vehicles waiting for their turn at food banks. This was March 30, 2020: 7/

This was New York City, March 28, 2020: 8/

Among countless other dystopian scenes citizens were sometimes forced to line up around the block, outside in freezing temperatures to stock up on supplies in observance of “social distancing.” 9/

The concept of “social distancing” was rubber-stamped into US policy in 2004 based on China’s lockdowns during SARS. Alternative histories of the birth of social distancing by NYT and Michael Lewis appear to have been nothing but thin cover stories. 10/
brownstone.org/articles/real-…

March 27, 2020: Trump defends school closures.

“Some of them are very happy not to go to school… They should just sit back and be very proud of our country because we’re doing it for them.” 11/

On the contrary, school closures proved to be one of the most destructive policies in US history, setting many kids’ education back by years and creating a crisis of absenteeism and mental health we’re still grappling with today. 12/

Trump often put on an anti-lockdown persona. But behind the scenes, his administration was pressuring states to remain shut down.

April 14, 2020: “There are some states that want to open up now. If we disagree with it, we’re not gonna let them open.” 13/

The Trump administration even pressured local officials to prolong mandates in defiance of state governors who wanted to reopen.

“You started to have federal agencies working directly with local governments to impose restrictions over the state.” 14/

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, the first US governor to reopen his state, recalled how Trump called and tried to pressure him to extend the lockdown.

“That afternoon Mr. Trump called Mr. Kemp, ‘and he was furious.’” 15/
wsj.com/articles/brian…

Trump publicly condemned Kemp’s decision to reopen Georgia.

“I told the governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, that I disagree—strongly—with his decision.” 16/

Kemp later recalled how Trump “led the opposition” against his decision to reopen Georgia.

“He listened to Fauci & parroted media talking points… He may not remember, but I sure as hell do.” 17/

Lockdowns have often been associated with Anthony Fauci—but Fauci had Trump’s full approval for all his actions.

July 31, 2020: Trump War Room stresses how deferential Trump has been to Fauci. “We were in agreement on virtually all of those.” 18/

On several occasions, Fauci recalled that Trump never disagreed with any of his advice to implement lockdown measures. 19/

September 15, 2020: Trump tells ABC’s George Stephanopoulos there was nothing he would have done differently.

“I think we could have had 2 million deaths if we didn’t close out the country… I think we did a great job.” 20/

On numerous occasions, Trump boasted about and took personal credit for COVID restrictions and closures. 21/

Far from sidelining Fauci, at the end of his term, Trump even gave Fauci an award for his contributions to the “Operation Warp Speed Team.” 22/

Up to the very end of his term, the Trump White House was issuing guidance to the states to prolong COVID lockdown measures. 23/

Trump often fashioned himself as a “China hawk,” but he was never short on praise for Xi Jinping, who pioneered the concept of “lockdown.” Trump’s businesses continued to do millions of dollars in business annually with China during his time in office. 24/

Though little known outside Washington, arguably the most important official behind the US response to COVID is Trump’s former Deputy Natsec Advisor Matt Pottinger, who worked 7 years in China and called initial shots and meetings on COVID in Jan 2020. 25/
brownstone.org/articles/matt-…

After working in China, Pottinger was groomed in US intelligence and recruited into the White House by General Michael Flynn. Soon after, Flynn was convicted of a felony for lying to the FBI about his meetings with the Russians—but Trump pardoned him. 26/
nytimes.com/2017/04/04/wor…

Pottinger recruited Deborah Birx into Trump’s COVID Task Force. Birx played the lead role orchestrating lockdowns across the US, advising each state on mandates that were as strict as possible, supposedly based on her experience during SARS in Asia. 27/
tabletmag.com/sections/news/…

Birx has notoriously made a number of conflicting statements surrounding her role. 28/
brownstone.org/articles/how-d…

Nearly half a trillion dollars in federal COVID relief approved by the Trump administration was lost to fraud, primarily to hackers in China and Russia, by far the largest heist in US history—enough money to fund Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for years. 29/
nbcnews.com/news/us-news/e…

Trump administration officials awarded contracts for ventilators and PPE worth hundreds of millions of dollars to politically-connected firms. 30/
propublica.org/article/trump-…

The Trump administration ultimately spent billions stockpiling ventilators and other PPE—but most of the ventilators went unused when they sometimes proved counterproductive or even deadly in the initial months of COVID. 31/
reuters.com/article/idUSKB…

Due to the surge in government spending on PPE, tests, and ventilators, dozens of new billionaires were minted within months of COVID’s appearance—primarily in China—while workers lost trillions, the swiftest upward transfer of wealth in human history. 32/
forbes.com/sites/giacomot…

Through Operation Warp Speed, Trump fast-tracked the approval and production of mRNA vaccines, which the Trump White House touted as being “90% effective.” This claim proved misleading. 33/

For the avoidance of doubt, Trump told Fox News he was the “father of the vaccine.” 34/

Dr Jay Bhattacharya later explained how Trump’s White House Coronavirus Task Force orchestrated lockdowns across the US, and Trump failed to sideline Fauci and Birx despite realizing lockdowns were ineffective. 35/

Toward the end of 2020, Dr Scott Atlas was brought into the White House and played a heroic role in rolling back COVID lockdowns.

As Atlas later explained: “There is no separation between what Trump said and did and what the Fauci-Birx policy was.” 36/

As Robert F Kennedy Jr pointed out, COVID lockdowns were Trump’s responsibility:

“The coup de grace was the lockdown. The lockdown was the biggest shift in wealth in human history, and I blame President Trump for the lockdown…he was the President.” 37/

Through the leadership of Governor Ron DeSantis, Florida became the vanguard of resistance to COVID mandates in the US. Originally, Trump repeatedly praised DeSantis’s leadership during COVID. 38/

In June 2021, DeSantis became the first major public figure to call out China’s role in promoting lockdowns.

“China was very much invested in promoting lockdowns…public health guidance was never in a pandemic to just lock down.” 39/

But once Trump sensed that DeSantis was a threat, Trump began attacking his leadership during COVID.

April 20, 2023: Trump claims, falsely, that Florida had “more deaths than almost every country.” 40/

Trump claimed that NY Governor Andrew Cuomo “did better” than DeSantis on COVID—though New York saw the highest rate of COVID deaths per capita in the US, in addition to some of the nation’s longest and most draconian restrictions. 41/

November 4, 2023: Trump leaves DeSantis out of his list of governors who did well on COVID, but then grows visibly nervous when the crowd started chanting “Florida!” in response. 42/

September 15, 2023: Trump insists his administration couldn’t have done a better job with the response to COVID. “As good as it could be!” 43/

Trump continues to boast about his record on COVID, fast-tracking vaccines and ventilators.

“Democrats…very smart people tell me, ‘you saved 100 million people worldwide.’ The ventilators, we did a tremendous job… I never got the credit I deserve.” 44/

Trump still has never acknowledged any errors or adverse effects from COVID vaccines. 45/

DeSantis remains the only candidate in the 2024 presidential race to promise a reckoning for the response to COVID.

“Well it’s not about credit… they were wrong… and I’ll bring accountability so it never happens in our country again.” 46/

Instead of promising accountability for what happened during COVID, Trump instead began threatening Republicans in Congress who hesitated to endorse him in the primary until nearly all of them fell into line. 47/

But really… weren’t there any signs beforehand that maybe Trump just wasn’t a real stand-up guy? This was Trump’s reply when asked what he had in common with his daughter Ivanka in 2013: “Well, I was going to say sex.” 48/

It’s all enough to make you wonder why exactly Trump has gone to such lengths to destroy the one candidate promising accountability for the response to COVID—and just who benefits from having people believe that Trump is the new “shepherd to mankind.” /end