By February, Donald Trump privately knew COVID-19 was a deadly, airborne plague. But publicly he dismissed its dangers.

He didn’t want to depress the stock market—and thus his chances for re-election.

By doing so, he condemned tens of thousands of Americans to needless suffering and death. And, ironically, he turned the disease he sought to hide into the #1 issue of the 2020 Presidential campaign.

The virus first appeared in Wuhan, China, in December, 2019.  Its first reported victim became ill on December 1.

By December 31, the outbreak was traced to a novel strain of Coronavirus.

Coronaviruses are a group of viruses that affect birds and mammals. In humans, Coronaviruses can cause pneumonia and may cause bronchitis.

Coronavirus

On February 29, the first American died of Coronavirus. 

According to the March 21 edition of Rolling Stone magazine: “The United States intelligence community has been warning the president since January and February about the dire consequences that would occur when coronavirus reached America, but the president seemed determined to play down the threat, leaving the country largely unaware and unprepared.”

An anonymous Intelligence official cited by the Washington Post said: “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. The system was blinking red.”

STAGE ONE: DENIAL

Trump first learned of the virus on January 3, 2020. This did not prevent him from playing golf on January 4, 5, 18 and 19.

On January 19, the first Coronavirus case appeared in the United States.

On January 27, then-acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney tried to get the President to act. But, according to officials who spoke with the Washington Post, Trump was “dismissive” of early briefings “because he did not believe that the virus had spread widely throughout the United States.”

Trump fired Mulvaney one month later. 

Then, for Trump, it was back to the golf course—on February 1, 2 and 15.

STAGE TWO: LIES

From January to early March, 2020, Trump and his allies within the Republican party and Fox News Network repeatedly assured Americans they had nothing to fear. 

Donald Trump

Barnstorming the country in a series of hate-filled political rallies, Trump told his supporters:

• January 22:“We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China.”
• February 2: “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China. It’s going to be fine.”
• February 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.”
• February 25: “CDC & my administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.”
• February 25: “I think that’s a problem that’s going to go away. They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine.”
• February 26: “The 15 cases within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.” 
• February 26: “We’re going very substantially down, not up.”
• February 27: “One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.” 
• February 28: “We’re ordering a lot of supplies. We’re ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn’t be ordering unless it was something like this. But we’re ordering a lot of different elements of medical.”
• February 28: “Now the Democrats are politicizing the Coronavirus….We did one of the great jobs….One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia’….They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax….It’s all turning, they lost….And this is their new hoax.”
• March 4: “If we have thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work—some of them go to work, but they get better.” 
• March 6: “I think we’re doing a really good job in this country of keeping it down. A tremendous job of keeping it down.”
• March 6: “Anybody right now, and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test. And the tests are beautiful.”
• March 6: “I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for President.”
• March 8: “We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on Coronavirus.”
• March 9: “The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power (it used to be greater!) to inflame the CoronaVirus situation, far beyond what the facts would warrant. Surgeon General, The risk is low to the average American.” 
• March 10: “It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.” 

STAGE THREE: REPUBLICAN SUBSERVIENCE

Actually, with the virus spreading quickly throughout at least 33 states, it was not going away. It was not the news that was fake—but the lies and ignorance that Trump and his followers were spewing. 

During the vital months of January and February, Republicans refused to challenge Trump’s refusal to take the virus seriously—before it gained a foothold in the United States.

The reason: They had utterly tied themselves to him since the 2018 mid-term elections, where many moderate Republicans lost their seats.