On March 7, 2020, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino, the Android ego to Trump’s iPhone Twitter id, tweeted the above image. The following morning, the president re-tweeted it with the added comment.
The earliest we know the president was made personally aware of the pandemic was in mid-January, when Peter Navarro briefed him on “what’s coming.” The president and senior administration officials were briefed at least nine more times of the public health and economic impacts of “what’s coming” before Mr. Scavino’s tweet and the president’s re-tweet.
The first case of Covi-19 infection in the US was recorded on January 21. The first community spread case was announced on January 30. The first US death attributed at the time occurred on February 29 (autopsies of two victims in California released last month place the first US death on February 6).
On March 7, 2020, New York had 21 confirmed cases. Even Georgia had seen its first three and Washington DC its first.
Nineteen Americans were known to have died of the virus.
It has been sixty days from the president’s aw-shucks-who-knows post of Mr. Scavino’s tweet. A million-and-a-quarter cases of infections have been confirmed in the US. Attributed deaths stand at 75,000 Americans.
“Who knows what this means?” asked the president sixty days ago.
At the risk of being booted for CT, I have to say, he knew what it meant. And it excited him.
He knew what would happen, and chose to let it happen, to help it happen.
Whether he was swayed by Wilbur Ross’ fantasy of trillions of dollars in manufacturing magically returning to America from China or Jared’s instinctive response of finding a grift or some twisty Stephen Miller voter-suppression-with-extreme-prejudice fantasy, he chose this.
His cheerleading the lemmings to the salon and bowling alley while suppressing his own administration’s instructions to do so without more mass graves confirms he still chooses it today.
There is no longer any doubt of which one might give the benefit. This was chosen for us.
At what point can we stop reporting on the pandemic and start reporting on the genocide?