President Donald Trump was fully aware that on Jan. 21, the coronavirus had hit the United States, the land he’s been elected (by Russian oligarchs) to govern. He may have also known of the disease’s devastation as early as December but on Jan. 21, a 30-year-old Washington state man who had visited Wuhan, China had become sick.
On Feb. 28, Trump was speaking to a group of people who love him in Charleston, S.C. where he claimed the coronavirus was merely a Democratic hoax that his rivals were politicizing because they hate him.
“Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus,” Trump said. “They have no clue, they can’t even count their votes in Iowa,” he said after a Democratic primary took a while to claim a winner, NBC News reports.
“This is their new hoax,” Trump continued, noting that the Democratic Party’s “single talking point” was attacking the White House’s response to the coronavirus.
Now, news sites are reporting that on Feb. 7, with the coronavirus working its way around the United States, the White House administration sent some 17.8 tons of medical supplies, which included masks, respirators and other personal protective equipment (PPE) to China.
Literally three weeks after the president knew that the first case of the coronavirus had been confirmed in the U.S., he sent 17. 8 tons of equipment, which is equivalent to a black measurement of “50 ‘leven hundred,” to China.
From Mother Jones:
In a press release from the State Department dated Feb. 7, the agency announced it was prepared to spend up to $100 million to assist China as the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths continued to rise there. The day the press release went out, Trump tweeted that he spoke with China’s President Xi Jinping and that China would be “successful especially as the weather starts to warm & the virus hopefully becomes weaker and then gone.”
At the time, sending supplies overseas may have seemed like the right thing to do. But it’s worth noting that this release of vital medical supplies came two days after several senators, including Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy, offered to allocate congressional emergency funding for preventative health measures and research to ward off the virus in the United States—and President Donald Trump turned it down. “Local health systems need supplies, training, screening staff, etc…” tweeted Murphy, “and they need it now.”
And then, when it all went to shit, Trump did what he does best and lied on former President Obama’s good name and claimed that his administration was the reason for the shortage of masks and other PPE.
The United States now has some 140,904 (and counting) cases of the coronavirus and a president who can’t read at grade level and struggles to add three-digit numbers. Social media has been bombarded with photos of hospitals looking like war zones and nurses wearing homemade protective gear; some have even taken to social media with the hashtag #GetMePPE.
I mean look at this:
And this is just heartbreaking:
On Wednesday, according to Mother Jones, “the Trump administration asked the international community for donations of equipment, including N-95 masks, gloves, respirators, and hand sanitizer. But even as his officials ask for foreign aid.”
Maybe we wouldn’t need help if the Clark Griswold of presidents didn’t send all our shit to China because he ignored scientists’ recommendation that the coronavirus was moving fast.
It’s part of the reason that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told CNN’s Jake Tapper Sunday morning that Trump’s got blood on his hands, not that he gives a shit.
“His denial at the beginning was deadly,” Pelosi said, Mother Jones reports. Trump’s bumbling fuckery and inability to get “equipment to where it’s needed, is deadly.”