Thread by @gtconway3d

And here it is. No surprise.

“Donald Trump may not have been expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were — they just couldn't get him to do anything about it,” this official said. ‘The system was blinking red.’”

https://twitter.com/jdawsey1/status/1241156349515440140

“Intelligence agencies ‘have been warning on this since January,’ said a U.S. official with access to intelligence reporting that was disseminated to members of Congress [and] the Trump administration ...”
washingtonpost.com/national-secur…

“[T]he ... warnings painted an early picture of a virus that showed the characteristics of a globe-encircling pandemic .... But despite that constant flow of reporting, Trump continued publicly and privately to play down the threat ....”
washingtonpost.com/national-secur….

“Inside the White House, Trump’s advisers struggled to get him to take the virus seriously, according to multiple officials with knowledge of meetings among those advisers and with the president.”
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“Azar couldn’t get through to Trump to speak with him about the virus until Jan. 18 .... When he reached Trump by phone, the president interjected to ask about vaping and when flavored vaping products would be back on the market ....
washingtonpost.com/national-secur…

“On Jan. 27, White House aides huddled with then-acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney in his office, trying to get senior officials to pay more attention to the virus ....”
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“Joe Grogan, the head of the White House Domestic Policy Council, argued that the administration needed to take the virus seriously or it could cost the president his reelection ....”
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“Mulvaney then began convening more regular meetings. In early briefings, however, officials said Trump was dismissive because he did not believe that the virus had spread widely throughout the United States.”
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“By early February, Grogan and others worried that there weren’t enough tests to determine the rate of infection .... Other officials ... began calling for a more forceful response ....”
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“But Trump resisted and continued to assure Americans that the coronavirus would never run rampant as it had in other countries.

“‘I think it’s going to work out fine,’ Trump said on Feb. 19.”
washingtonpost.com/national-secur…

“‘The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA,’ Trump tweeted five days later. ‘Stock Market starting to look very good to me!’

“But ... a senior [HHS] official ... delivered a starkly different message to the Senate Intelligence Committee ....”
washingtonpost.com/national-secur…

“Trump’s insistence on the contrary seemed to rest in his relationship with China’s President Xi , whom Trump believed was providing him with reliable information ... despite ... intelligence [reports] that Chinese officials were not being candid.”
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“On Feb. 25, Nancy Messonnier, a senior CDC official, sounded perhaps the most significant public alarm to that point, when she [said] disruptions to daily life could be “severe.” Trump …complained that Messonnier was scaring the stock markets, ….”
washingtonpost.com/national-secur…