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CORONAVIRUS TOOLKIT
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Topline Message 1
Digital Content 2
National Security Implications of Trump’s Failed Coronavirus Response 4
Mythbusters 8
A Failure to Lead on the World Stage 13
America’s Embarrassing Response and Catastrophic Reopening 15
Trump’s Scapegoat Ploy 18
A Better Way Forward 20
America’s Misinformer-In-Chief 23
Trump’s Abysmal Testing Track Record 27
Trump Left Us Vulnerable to a Health Crisis 31
The Obama-Biden Administration Long Warned of, and Prepared for a Pandemic 34
Recent Public Polling on Coronavirus 38
Experts: Trump’s Pandemic Response Has Put Americans in Danger 40
GOP Criticism of the Administration’s Responses 42TOPLINE MESSAGE
The Coronavirus pandemic was not inevitable, nor was the scale of the suffering and death
we have experienced in the United States. While other countries have safely reopened or even
contained the virus entirely, America has remained the world’s pandemic epicenter.
America’s failure rests squarely on President Trump’s shoulders.
Trump’s failed response to the Coronavirus has tragically reinforced what we have long
known: he will always place his interests over the national interest, no matter the
consequences for Americans. At each step, Trump’s approach has been entirely self-interested:
● Trump failed to treat global health as central to our national security.
● He dismantled the preparations prior administrations had put in place to protect us from,
and rapidly respond to, precisely this type of pandemic.
● Trump ignored numerous warnings and embraced China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in the
pandemic’s critical early weeks. Since then, he has continued to deny science, downplay
the virus, and mislead the public.
● Instead of leading the world in responding to a pandemic that knows no borders, the
United States under Trump has led the world in reported cases and deaths -- a shameful
distinction he has tried to blame on Beijing and the WHO to distract from his failures.
● Having learned none of the lessons from the outcomes of his Coronavirus response,
Trump raced to re-open the country, plunging America into an even deeper crisis as cases
and deaths consequently spiked.
Trump’s failures have taken a devastating toll, leaving over 150,000 Americans dead (and
counting), well over four million infected, over 30 million collecting unemployment benefits,
and millions more with livelihoods in the balance, as America has become an object of dismay
and alarm to the rest of the world.
1DIGITAL CONTENT
● Video: Trump has left us unprepared (Twitter)
● Video: Comparing Trump’s approached to Coronavirus and global warming
● Video: Trump has placed his interests above public health (Twitter, Facebook)
● Video: End Trump’s American carnage (Twitter, Facebook)
● Video: How not to reopen a county (Twitter, Facebook)
● Video on the parallels between Trump’s treatment of Ukraine vs. his treatment of U.S.
governors (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook)
● Video: Trump vs. the experts (Facebook)
● Video: Praise for Trump’s pandemic response in the administration
● Video: Trump has made Americans less safe (Facebook, Instagram)
● Video: Trump’s timeline of inaction (Twitter, Instagram)
● Social video: Timeline of Trump’s response to the crisis
● Social video: Trump’s Coronavirus lies (Twitter, Facebook)
● Social video: Trump blames everyone but himself (Twitter, Facebook)
● Social video: Trump praising China (Twitter)
● Video: Ambassador Susan Rice on the warnings Trump ignored (Twitter, Facebook)
● Video: Ambassador Susan Rice on the ideal global response (Twitter, Facebook)
● Video: Senator Chris Murphy on how to prepare for the next pandemic (Twitter, Facebook)
● Animated graphic: Trump’s claim that “nobody could have predicted this” (Twitter,
Facebook, Instagram)
● Animated graphic: Trump’s Coronavirus budget cuts (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram)
● Animated graphic: Trump threw out the pandemic playbook (Twitter)
● Social video: the absence of U.S. global leadership (Twitter, Facebook
● Animated graphic on Trump’s Coronavirus budget cuts (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram)
● Video: “I alone can fix it” vs. “I don’t take responsibility at all” (Twitter, Facebook,
Instagram)
● Video on Trump’s Coronavirus sabotage (Twitter, Facebook)
● Video on Trump’s downplaying of the Coronavirus crisis (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook)
● Video on Trump’s Coronavirus cover-up (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook)
2● Video on the lack of testing (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook)
● Video on Trump’s early Coronavirus response (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook)
Other Resources
● Protect Our Care: Daily Coronavirus Updates
● Center for American Progress: Coronavirus Materials
3THE NATIONAL SECURITY IMPLICATIONS
OF TRUMP’S FAILED CORONAVIRUS
RESPONSE
Public health is national security, and Trump has abjectly failed the American people. With
more than 150,000 American dead, more of our fellow citizens have died from the virus than in
World War I; in April, even Trump administration offi cials told us to prepare for 9/11-scale death
tolls every single day.
This threat was neither inevitable nor unforeseen. Pandemic preparedness has been a key
element of American intelligence, diplomacy, and broader national security planning for years.
● For the past several years, the DNI’s Annual Threat Assessment has presciently warned
that pandemic diseases threaten our national security and could “lead to major societal
and economic disruptions.”
● These assessments add to countless warnings from public health experts and national
security professionals during Trump’s three years in office and far before it, including
throughout the Obama-Biden administration.
● Cognizant of the threat, prior administrations prioritized using diplomacy and
development aid to build the global capacity to stop outbreaks at their source before they
could reach our shores, even as they also built domestic protections.
From the moment he took office, Trump went out of his way to ignore these assessments and
make America more vulnerable to a pandemic.
● Trump repeatedly proposed slashing funding for the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) and for the broader Department of Health and Human Services,
including cuts to public health and emergency preparedness programs.
● Trump did the same to the State Department and USAID, including the PREDICT program,
which specifically studied how to contain new Coronavirus diseases that would move
from animals to humans, as was the case with COVID-19.
4● Trump disbanded the global health security team on the National Security Council
designed to coordinate a federal response the day after an official on that team shared
her view that the government was not prepared for a pandemic flu.
● Trump also eliminated the homeland security advisor position responsible for
coordinating the government response on biodefense and biosecurity issues.
In addition to ignoring long-standing expert warnings about the toll a pandemic could take on
Americans, Trump was warned -- specifically and repeatedly -- of COVID-19 and the disease’s
outbreak repeatedly since January.
● Starting in January, intelligence briefings repeatedly warned the President that a
contagion spreading in Wuhan could reach our shores, calling it “a cataclysmic event.” By
February, warnings about the Coronavirus constituted the majority of the President’s daily
intelligence briefing.
● At the same time, Trump’s senior advisors were also sounding the alarm, including
through jarring memos, pleas for attention, warnings of “an unprecedented public health
threat,” and projecting “80,000 and 150,000” deaths.
● Most glaringly of all, increasingly dire warnings of a looming pandemic were splashed
across the world’s newspapers for weeks in January. That is precisely why experts
outside of government -- from Vice President Joe Biden to former Trump administration
officials -- took to the op-ed page with their own warnings.
Instead of taking action, Trump chose to downplay the virus, ignore experts, and deny science
in an effort to actively mislead the public and frustrate our national response -- all to put the
S&P 500 and his political interests over American lives and livelihoods.
● In the early stages of the pandemic, Trump cared more about “the numbers” -- even trying
to prevent a cruise ship from docking to keep our case count artificially low -- than he did
about ramping up testing, a rollout he botched. Even today, Trump calls testing a “double-
edged sword” and indicated that he told his administration to slow down testing in an
effort to mask the virus’s true toll.
● Trump repeatedly rejected or actively silenced expert guidance on the pandemic,
perhaps most egregiously in May when he forced the Centers for Disease Control and
5Prevention (CDC) to unpublish and scale-back its recommendations to businesses on how
to safely reopen, calling the guidelines, written by some of the world’s foremost infectious
diseases experts, “too prescriptive.”
● Trump has repeatedly pushed bogus science and false evidence. Initially, he claimed the
virus would “go away” in April and that “like a miracle, it will disappear” on the same day
that he called the virus a “hoax.” In July, with over 150,000 Americans dead and many
more lives and livelihoods in jeopardy, Trump falsely claimed that “99 percent” of cases
are “totally harmless.”
● All the while, Trump has actively made matters worse for local leaders on the front lines.
He resisted repeated and urgent calls to fully invoke the Defense Production Act, falsely
claimed he had “total authority” over states, and even lied that the Strategic National
Stockpile was not meant to be sent to states in need.
As the toll of his failures kept rising, Trump asserted “I don’t take responsibility at all” and
went on a mad search for a scapegoat before landing on China and its leader, Xi Jinping --
even though he had been praising Xi for months.
● Trump praised Xi on at least 15 occasions and heralded China’s transparency -- rejecting
the advice of his advisers who urged him to push for what Americans needed most at the
time: information on the virus’ nature and spread.
● Trump’s praise for Xi boils down to his prioritization of his political interests over the
national interest, specifically signing in January an empty and now defunct “Phase One”
trade deal that he short-sightedly saw as critical to his re-election.
● Now, again for purely political reasons, Trump and his Republican allies have pivoted to a
“blame China” strategy -- including recklessly withdrawing from the WHO, touting his
belated and ineffective China travel ban, and stirring hate by xenophobically calling
COVID-19 the “Chinese virus” and even “kung flu.”
● While the Coronavirus did originate in China and Beijing covered-up the outbreak and
continues to stonewall scientific research, many leaders have managed to protect their
people from its effects. But only the President of the United States is responsible for
protecting American lives, and Trump has failed spectacularly.
6We ran out of time for Trump’s incompetence months ago: we desperately need new, credible
leadership to safely re-open the country and stop the pandemic’s spread. The unavoidable
reality is that Trump’s Coronavirus response has made America an international embarrassment
and pariah. Until we change our leadership in November, Americans will need to look to
examples from global leaders on how to safely contain the virus and reopen the country.
● In successfully reopened countries -- where case counts are plummeting, students are
going back to classrooms, and resorts are even welcoming foreign tourists -- national
leaders tackled the pandemic by listening to the best available scientific evidence,
communicating clearly and consistently to local authorities and citizens, and putting the
national interest over their own at every turn.
● We also must work with the international community as it races to coordinate responses
to the virus -- just as the Obama-Biden administration did in containing the 2014-2015
Ebola outbreak. At the time, the U.S. government marshalled an international response
that was unprecedented in scope and scale. The result was a contained outbreak, and
only two American deaths.
● Trump has done just the opposite, doubling down on his broken “America first” strategy
that has defined his feckless foreign policy, which failed when it came to a borderless
threat like the Coronavirus. Trump’s abdication of leadership on global public health,
coupled with his actions to withdraw from and defund the World Health Organization, put
millions of lives at risk, both at home and abroad.
Bottom Line: Trump’s failed response to the Coronavirus has tragically reinforced what we
have long known to be true -- that Trump will always place his interests over the national
interest, even with the cost to Americans climbing to over 150,000 dead (and counting), and
millions more lives and livelihoods in jeopardy.
7MYTHBUSTERS
Myth: Coronavirus cases are only going up because of increased testing. Trump can’t be
blamed for the record cases we witnessed this summer.
FACTS: Testing doesn’t increase the number of Coronavirus infections -- it just increases the
number of cases we can identify and to which we can respond.
● Trump has falsely attributed soaring COVID-19 cases to improved testing in the United
States to deflect from his tragic reopening push. At his rally in Tulsa, Trump called testing
a “double-edged sword” and indicated that he told his administration to slow down
testing so the United States won’t look so bad.
● Reduced testing would accomplish nothing but depriving public health authorities of the
information they need to trace and contain the virus, all while trying to dupe Americans.
● Just as worryingly, Trump’s testing lies obscure two very dire warning signs: America’s
rising death toll and its growing testing positivity rates. Contrary to Trump’s claims that
America has a low mortality rate, our death count is soaring and our mortality rate is
among the world’s highest. At the same time, and despite the vast number of tests being
administered per day, our testing positivity rate is increasing in many states, confirming
that the virus is only getting worse.
Myth: Democrats are moving unreasonably slow on reopening: the President has
appropriately balanced economic interests with public safety.
FACTS: The spiking case count and death toll throughout the country have laid bare the tragic
incompetence and cruelty that have defined Trump’s pandemic approach.
● The simple, devastating reality is that businesses will have no customers if those
customers are dead, hospitalized, or caring for ill family members. Businesses will not
have employees if they are sick or afraid to return to their workplace. Saving the economy
means saving the American people from the pandemic first.
8● States that reopened too quickly in May are now facing all-time high infection rates.
States like Florida and Arizona, whose governors rushed the reopening process to the
praise of Trump, are now being forced to hurriedly and haphazardly revert to earlier
lockdown measures to halt exponential case growth.
● Meanwhile, Democrats have proposed a worker-first reopening plan that values the
health of everyday Americans more than the health of the S&P 500. Under Vice President
Biden’s plan, the government will fund a national testing plan to make sure that workers
can get tested on a regular basis, as well as provide funds to make sure workplaces are
fitted with new equipment like plexiglass shields, masks, thermometers, filtration systems,
and other OSHA-recommended measures to stop the spread of the virus while Americans
return to work.
Myth: Coronavirus proves that Trump’s “America First” agenda keeps us safe.
FACTS: The exact opposite has proven true: the Coronavirus pandemic shatters any illusion
that Trump’s go-it-alone, “America First” approach could be effective against 21st century
threats. The reality is that many of today’s threats – pandemics, climate change,
disinformation – transcend borders, and necessitate working with other countries to keep
Americans safe, which Trump has manifestly failed to do.
• Instead of working with our European allies to combat the spread of the deadly virus,
including by failing to take advantage of a German-made diagnostic test that actually
worked, Trump’s instincts were to laud China for its mishandling of Coronavirus -- and to
refuse to push Beijing for the transparency we desperately needed in the early stages of
the pandemic to keep Americans safe.
• Trump’s decision to withdraw from and defund the WHO not only puts the lives of millions
abroad at risk, but also the health and safety of Americans at home. The pandemic will not
be over until the virus is contained in all corners of the globe. As evidenced by the
Obama-Biden administration's success containing Ebola, the WHO is the most effective
multilateral mechanism to address outbreaks wherever they are and shouldn’t be
abandoned in the midst of a pandemic.
9• All told, Trump’s selfish actions during the pandemic have left America alone on the world
stage, to our detriment. For example, when world leaders convened in early May to raise
over $8.2 billion dollars to support an international COVID-19 research fund, the U.S. was
nowhere to be found. Instead, the Trump administration was caught red-handed trying to
bribe a German company to exclusively provide its vaccines to American citizens -- even
further discrediting the United States as a partner, let alone leader, on global public
health.
Myth: None of this is really President Trump’s fault. China could have stopped this virus from
happening, but Democrats would rather blame Trump than China.
FACTS: Try as he might to find a scapegoat, the President of the United States is responsible
for protecting the American people -- not China, nor Xi Jinping. But instead of demanding the
transparency we needed from China to safeguard American lives and livelihoods, Trump
repeatedly fawned over Xi to sign an empty trade deal.
● While China mishandled and downplayed its outbreak in the initial days, publicly available
sources -- and the President’s intelligence briefings -- were sounding the alarm in early
January, weeks before the first case in the United States.
● In these critical early weeks, what Americans needed most was information on the virus’
characteristics and transmission -- information only China had at the time. But Trump
twiced refused the urgings of his senior officials, and instead repeatedly fawned over Xi
to protect an empty trade deal -- signed in January and implemented in February -- that
promised little and has already collapsed.
● Unlike the United States, other countries -- including China’s close neighbors -- were able
to contain the virus from the beginning by taking decisive, evidence-backed actions. As of
late July, Taiwan has only seven deaths from the Coronavirus. Hong Kong, which borders
China by land, had only eighteen. And countries like South Korea, New Zealand, and
Singapore have been held up as examples for managing the virus -- in stark contrast to
the United States.
10Myth: The WHO is wholly useless, even in the midst of a pandemic, and in the pocket of
China. America doesn’t need to fund or participate in the organization.
FACTS: Trump’s reckless withdrawal from the world’s leading multilateral public health
institution in the middle of a devastating pandemic will put American lives at risk, and will
only damage Trump’s stated goal by ceding more power and influence to China.
● Trump’s decision to withdraw from and defund the WHO not only puts the lives of millions
abroad at risk, but also the health and safety of Americans at home. The pandemic will not
be over until the virus is contained in all corners of the globe. As evidenced by the
Obama-Biden administration's success containing Ebola, the WHO is the most effective
multilateral mechanism to address outbreaks wherever they are and shouldn’t be
abandoned in the midst of a pandemic.
● While the WHO has its flaws and needs reform, leaving the organization only cedes
further influence to China. The U.S. needs a seat at the table to push for change -- but
Trump seems intent on letting China dominate the conversation. If Trump was really
concerned about countering China’s influence in the WHO, he would have engaged with
the organization to counterbalance China. Instead, departing from the WHO is a gift to Xi
Jinping, whose influence will only grow.
Myth: Trump took decisive action in the best way he could to keep Americans safe: banning
travel to the United States, first from China and then from Europe.
FACTS: Americans should not be fooled: Trump’s real motivation for touting his ineffective
travel bans is to divert attention from his broader disastrous response.
● Experts agree that travel bans are most effective during early mitigation phases of a
pandemic. But Trump’s travel bans came too late to stop transmission into the U.S. By the
time he banned travel from Europe in mid-March, the Coronavirus had already been
spreading within our communities for weeks -- and those cases originated in Europe, not
China.
11● Worse, Trump entirely squandered the benefit that a travel ban is designed to have:
buying time to prepare for a surge. Instead of preparing for the virus’ arrival by, among
other steps, quickly invoking the Defense Production Act in March to produce vital
supplies like N95 masks and ventilators -- as dozens of national security leaders urged
him to do -- or increase our national testing capacity, Trump downplayed the crisis,
rejected science, and misled the public.
● Now, thanks to Trump’s failed reopening strategy and exploding infection rates, the
United States finds itself on the other side of these travel bans, with the European Union
banning all Americans from traveling to the bloc while permitting citizens from China and
Venezuela to enter.
Myth: Obama-era regulations were to blame for the severe testing shortages.
FACTS: Trump’s lie – that Obama-era regulations are to blame for Trump’s testing failures –
fell flat on its face. Dr. Fauci said himself that he’s “not sure what regulations or what it was
that they're talking about” on Fox News Sunday in March.
● Trump has had control over all FDA regulations on testing for three years, but he failed to
take any steps to address whatever problems he now claims to have run into until a
month after the HHS declared an emergency over Coronavirus, even though – as Chris
Wallace noted – “they could have done that on day one.”
● When German scientists developed an efficient and effective test just one week after
receiving the virus’s genome, the Trump administration repeatedly rejected its use,
insisting on developing an American-made test that the CDC later admitted was faulty and
inaccurate.
● Even in July, Trump cannot help but pathetically attempt to deflect blame to the Obama-
Biden administration for his own failures, most recently blaming his predecessors for
“stopping testing” -- an absurd claim if he was referring to the Coronavirus, which started
three years after the end of the Obama-Biden administration, and a complete falsity if
referencing the H1N1 outbreak in 2009.
12A FAILURE TO LEAD ON THE
WORLD STAGE
The single most indispensable element of the successful approach to fighting and containing
Ebola in 2014-2015 was American leadership on the world stage. The U.S. government
marshalled an international response that was unprecedented in scope and scale. The Obama-
Biden administration pushed every developed and many developing countries to contribute to
the response in the form of funding, health care workers, scientific know-how, and even service
members, just as we worked with our closest partners to ensure a coordinated approach to
domestic preparedness.
But in the case of COVID-19, President Trump has not only completely failed to lead the
international community, he has actively obstructed international public health cooperation.
His approach -- an “America first” strategy that has defined his feckless foreign policy -- failed
when it came to a borderless threat like the Coronavirus. Trump’s abdication of leadership on
global public health, coupled with his actions to withdraw from and defund the World Health
Organization, put millions of lives at risk, both at home and abroad.
● During the early days of the pandemic, our allies looked on incredulously as Trump
bragged about having solved the pandemic by closing the border to Chinese travelers
but not addressing America’s embarrassing lack of testing. One British diplomat told the
press: “There is a general level of incredulity over his comments but especially over the
lack of [America’s] testing...the last few days have caused more than the usual eye rolling.
There is genuine disbelief.”
● In March, President Macron and Chancellor Merkel had to personally lobby Trump – the
chair of the G7 – to hold a teleconference amongst world leaders to coordinate a global
response because the President was unwilling to take the issue seriously.
● When the administration finally began to take the pandemic more seriously in early
March, Trump announced a travel ban from Europe without even calling European leaders
13ahead of time -- worsening diplomatic relations with our allies at a time when leaders
should be communicating more, not less, often.
● In May, while world leaders like German Chancellor Merkel, French President Macron, and
Japanese Prime Minister Abe convened to raise over $8.2 billion dollars to support an
international Covid-19 research fund, the United States was nowhere to be found --
appearing stingy with international aid while rivals like China and Russia used “mask
diplomacy” to advance their strategic agendas.
● Instead of leading a global health effort, the Trump administration was caught red-handed
trying to bribe a German company to exclusively provide its vaccines to American citizens
ahead of everyone else in the world.
● Perhaps most egregious of all, Trump’s decision to defund and withdraw from the World
Health Organization may not only cost American lives at home, but also endanger millions
of people overseas who live in countries that are ill-equipped to deal with the pandemic
or distribute a vaccine on a wide scale. Ending the pandemic means defeating the virus in
every corner of the globe to prevent reinfection waves coming back to the U.S. Despite
its faults, the WHO provides the only effective mechanism to achieve global suppression
of the virus -- especially by helping coordinate the deployment of an eventual vaccine.
Digital Content
● Video: Ambassador Susan Rice on the ideal global response (Twitter, Facebook)
14AMERICA’S EMBARRASSING
RESPONSE AND CATASTROPHIC
REOPENING
As states fight a resurgence of the virus, other nations provide an eye-opening point of
reference for how poorly the Trump administration has handled America’s pandemic response
and reopening. In successfully reopened countries -- where case counts are plummeting,
students are going back to classrooms, and resorts are even welcoming foreign tourists --
national leaders tackled the pandemic by listening to the best available scientific evidence,
communicating clearly and consistently to local authorities and citizens, and putting the national
interest over their own at every turn.
In all of these respects, Trump’s pandemic response and reopening push have failed
categorically. Instead of listening to the experts, Trump has consistently rejected science and put
his interest, ego, and pocketbook over the health of the American people. The consequences of
Trump’s failed national reopen strategy can not only be seen domestically, but also
internationally, where countries are watching America’s rising infection rates with horror and
disdain.
● A scientific advisor to New Zealand’s government remarked that he was watching “in
horror” as America reopened wildly unprepared and without adequate support from the
federal government.
● The European Union has banned all American citizens from travelling to the continent,
while allowing citizens from countries like China and Venezuela to visit -- one of many
examples of how far our star compared to other countries not burdened by Trump’s
incompetence and his catastrophic approach to the virus.
In South Korea, President Moon Jae-in quickly scaled up testing and used a pre-existing
pandemic playbook when the country was a virus epicenter in the early stages of the
15outbreak. After a cautious, phased reopening, South Korea held a nationwide election without
seeing a spike in cases.
● Donald Trump, on the other hand, discarded the literal playbook of lessons learned from
previous pandemics in the Obama-Biden administration and even claimed he ordered a
testing slowdown to falsely push down infection counts.
● In stark contrast to South Korea’s successful election in April, Trump has deliberately
failed to provide adequate election support to states and gone so far as to falsely attack
safe and effective alternatives like vote-by-mail in a blatant effort to reduce trust in our
electoral process in service of his own political ends.
In New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern led a response that actually eradicated all
cases of COVID-19 within her country by following a playbook guided entirely by scientific
consensus, not politics. Meanwhile, in the United States, the Trump administration has provided
vague and even censored guidelines to states on metrics and timelines in an effort to rush the
reopening process.
● In May, the White House forced the CDC to unpublish and scale-back its
recommendations to businesses on how to safely reopen, calling the guidelines, written
by some of the world’s foremost infectious diseases experts, “too prescriptive.”
● One CDC scientist told reporters that an administration official had warned that the
agency’s reopening guidelines “would never see the light of day.”
In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government has coordinated closely with state and
regional leaders and the broader federal government at every stage of the pandemic. A former
research scientist, Merkel closely followed the guidance of public health experts to take decisive
action early on.
● By contrast, Trump’s decision to take a “not-my-problem” approach to reopening has left
governors and mayors scrambling to figure out who has authority over what domain and
how to secure the resources necessary to reopen.
16And in Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made the enormously difficult decision to cancel the
Summer Olympics after years of planning. From the Vatican to Vietnam, leaders around the
world have made it very clear that even during a reopening phase, large scale events cannot and
will not occur until a vaccine is developed. Yet Trump has continued to push for large events in
search of applause and the promise of airtime.
● In May, Trump insisted that all 1,100 West Point cadets return to campus so that he could
deliver a televised graduation speech in-person the following month. Fifteen cadets later
tested positive for COVID-19 upon their return to campus.
● Trump held a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma -- a state where infections are rising at record-high
rates. Rather than postpone the gathering, as local officials urged him to do, the campaign
forced attendees to sign a risk-waiver in case they contract COVID-19 as a result of
attending -- even as the Trump campaign announced an outbreak within its own staff
attending the rally. Undeterred, Trump continued to organize rallies around the country for
weeks even as his campaign staffers caught the virus and the number of new cases rose
rapidly.
Digital Content
● Video: How not to reopen a county (Twitter, Facebook)
● Video on Trump’s downplaying of the Coronavirus crisis (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook)
● Video: End Trump’s American carnage (Twitter, Facebook)
17TRUMP’S SCAPEGOAT PLOY
President Trump and his allies are deflecting blame from their disastrous COVID-19 response
by focusing on the virus’ origins in China -- eliding what the administration should have done
to prepare for the pandemic’s arrival and still must do to ensure a safe reopening. We should
treat this latest blame-shifting tactic as what it is: an unconvincing political ploy to put a spotlight
solely on China rather than on the administration’s profound and tragic failures.
Trump was warned -- specifically and repeatedly -- of a novel disease outbreak in China for
weeks, but he squandered the opportunity to prepare.
● Starting in January, intelligence briefings repeatedly warned the President that a
contagion spreading in Wuhan could reach our shores, calling it “a cataclysmic event.” By
February, it had become the majority of the President’s daily intelligence briefing.
● At the same time, public warnings were splashed across the globe’s newspapers, and his
senior advisors were sounding the alarm through dire memos, pleas, warnings and
projections. Yet Trump ignored these warnings, spent weeks misleading and lying to the
public, and squandered the opportunity to prepare.
Rather than push China in these critical early weeks for transparency on the virus’
transmission and spread, Trump lavished him with praise, going so far as to laud China for the
“transparency” that Trump now concedes he never received.
● Trump twice refused the advice of his advisors to push China for transparent disclosures
and access, which might have revealed key facts we desperately needed about people-
to-people transmission and asymptomatic spread.
● Instead, Trump praised China and Xi Jinping on at least 15 occasions as the virus spread,
said he trusted Xi and often touted their relationship, and heralded China’s transparency
-- of all things -- and its Coronavirus response.
● Trump’s praise for Xi boils down to his prioritization of his political interests over the
national interest, specifically signing in January an empty, already defunct “Phase One”
18trade deal that he short-sightedly saw as critical to his re-election.
Even worse than praising Xi, Trump gutted our scientific presence in China tracking exactly
this kind of disease, over the protests of experts.
● In early 2018, State Department cables warned of safety issues with the labs in China and
recommended greater engagement and technical assistance.
● Trump took the opposite approach, slashing CDC staff in China by two-thirds and
eliminating a CDC medical epidemiologist position embedded in China’s CDC. The former
official lamented: “If someone had been there, public health officials and governments
across the world could have moved much faster.”
● In October, the administration shut down a USAID program called PREDICT that provided
surveillance of emerging infectious diseases and viruses.
Our focus now should be on protecting Americans, but Trump and his allies are more
concerned with shirking political responsibility than they are with ramping up testing,
protecting essential workers, or developing real strategies to safely reopen the country. A time
will come to act on Beijing’s negligence in the early phases of the Coronavirus pandemic, which
an international investigation could help to uncover. But Trump’s attempt to blame China for his
failures to protect the American people is a transparent political strategy, not the serious strategy
that this crisis urgently demands.
Digital Content
● Social video: Trump praising China (Twitter)
19A BETTER WAY FORWARD
From the Obama-Biden administration’s containment of the H1N1 and Ebola epidemics, to Joe
Biden’s science-based plans to safely re-open the economy, to Congressional Democrats’
leadership on prioritizing funding for vaccine research and international pandemic
coordination, Democrats are the party of competent national security leadership -- and that
includes public health.
American Leadership: Going forward, we need real leadership to contain the Coronavirus
pandemic -- at home and abroad -- and to prepare for the next global health crisis. The most
important element of the successful approach to fighting and containing the Ebola outbreak in
2014-2015 was American leadership.
Under the Obama-Biden administration, the U.S. government marshaled an international
response that was unprecedented in scope and scale.
● The United States mobilized every developed and many developing countries to
contribute to the response in the form of funding, healthcare workers, scientific know-
how, and even service members, just as we worked with partners to ensure a coordinated
approach to domestic preparedness -- from airport screening to the most effective forms
of monitoring those potentially infected. The Obama-Biden administration took these
steps to fight the epidemic at its source but also as the most effective way to protect the
American people from the virus.
● The next administration will return to the model refined during the Ebola crisis and
reinvest in critical global health institutions at the National Institutes of Health, the CDC,
US Agency for International Development, and National Security Council. Only with a
robust commitment to global health challenges in our government can we meet the
global challenge of epidemics and pandemics to once again take up the mantle of
leadership.
● Responding to a pandemic requires recommitting to international aid to empower
developing countries to expand and improve upon global health infrastructure.
20Pandemics like COVID-19 spread without regard for national boundaries, meaning it is in
everybody’s best interest to help each other respond more effectively.
International Cooperation: The United States needs to work shoulder-to-shoulder with our
allies, and engage with our competitors, to ensure that scientists can collaborate with their
colleagues overseas, that vaccines can reach every corner of the planet, and that countries
can effectively mobilize a response no matter where an epidemic appears next.
● Vice President Biden has pledged to rejoin the World Health Organization, recognizing
that it is the best forum to mount a global response that can eliminate the threat of
COVID-19 to protect lives and livelihoods. Although the WHO does need reform, the
United States should engage with our partners in the organization to have a say in
shaping its future, and to ensure we don’t cede ground to China.
● When scientists develop a vaccine for COVID-19, life won’t return to normal until that
vaccine can be effectively distributed to anyone who needs it -- no matter where they live.
In countries with less developed public health infrastructure, the United States should
lend a helping hand, not just out of altruism, but also to reduce the chance of a domestic
resurgence sparked by international travel.
Science-Based Reopening: On reopening the economy, Joe Biden’s approach could not be
more different, or more responsible, than Donald Trump’s flippant rush-to-reopen strategy.
Building on his experience successfully containing the H1N1 ,Ebola and Zika virus outbreaks
during the Obama-Biden administration, the Vice President’s plan places an emphasis on
protecting the health and safety of essential frontline workers over the opinions of Wall Street
bankers or Fox News pundits.
● The federal government would pay for the “regular and reliable COVID-19 testing of every
American worker,” while establishing a national “Pandemic Testing Board” to surge testing
capacity and appointing a Supply Commander to coordinate the fair distribution of PPE
distribution, instead of expecting governors to compete against each other for supplies.
● Small business owners could utilize a special federal grant program in order to afford
special virus mitigation equipment, which would cover costs for businesses to install
21plexiglass barriers, improved ventilation systems, and contactless payment devices in
order to protect customers and employees alike.
● Unlike most White House briefings, managers would receive clear, consistent, and
scientifically-informed guidance from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration
(OSHA) on how to re-open their offices -- including specifics on safety training for
employees, how to socially distance visitors in their spaces, and what the most up-to-date
sanitation procedures and products are for their respective work environment.
22AMERICA’S MISINFORMER-IN-CHIEF
In his quest to reassure the markets and mask his incompetence, Trump has made himself a
one-stop-shop for Coronavirus myths, hyperbole, and pseudo-science while silencing world-
class experts at the CDC and NIH. Rather than offer the crucial public health information
Amercians desperately need, Trump has instead been America’s Misinformer-in-Chief, putting his
interests over American lives.
Trump has repeatedly lied to the American people about the nature and scale of the pandemic
in a hopeless effort to hide the evidence of his failures:
● At the beginning of the pandemic, Trump relied heavily on the United States
government’s embarrassing lack of tests to falsely claim Coronavirus cases were low in
February and March. Trump even tried to prevent a cruise ship with hundreds of stranded
American citizens onboard from docking in San Francisco in case the ship added
numbers to America’s then-low case count.
● Trump arbitrarily and dangerously picked target dates in his reckless rush to reopen the
country. In March, Trump said he hoped to see “packed churches” on Easter Sunday.
When pressed by journalists for what informed this target date, Trump cited no scientific
evidence, saying he suggested the date because it “sounded beautiful.” Now, in July,
Trump is suddenly demanding all schools reopen in one month’s time even as
administrators say they are unprepared.
● As cases and deaths surge across the country -- a function of Trump squandering months
to prepare and rushing the country to reopen anyway -- Trump continues to shirk
responsibility by falsely claiming that increased testing is to blame. He even admitted
urging his administration to slow down testing and had Vice President Pence write a
scientifically baseless op-ed claiming there’s “no such thing as a second wave.” Just two
weeks after his op-ed, America witnessed a wave of new infections that surpassed the
pandemic’s peak in April.
23Trump has pushed bogus science, touted unproven medications, and rejected experts in a
rush to prematurely reopen America and save the stock market:
● Trump has repeatedly pushed bogus science and false evidence, initially to downplay the
virus entirely and more recently to justify re-opening the country. Initially, and with
complete disregard to epidemiological forecasts, he claimed the virus would “go away” in
April and claimed that “like a miracle, it will disappear” on the same day that he called the
virus a “hoax.” In July, with over 140,000 Americans dead and countless others facing
lasting damage from COVID-19, Trump falsely claimed that “99 percent” of cases are
“totally harmless.”
● As he denied or downplayed the virus, Trump simultaneously touted unproven and even
dangerous medications with no regard for the health of Americans. He misleadingly
promised a vaccine to Americans would be ready “rapidly,” pressured the FDA to clear
unproven treatments, touted the drug hydroxychloroquine as a “game changer” (it was
later found to generate no benefits), and even suggested injecting household
disinfectants into the body.
● Trump has repeatedly rejected expert guidance on managing the pandemic, perhaps
most egregiously in May when he forced the CDC to unpublish and scale-back its
recommendations to businesses on how to safely reopen, calling the guidelines, written
by some of the world’s foremost infectious diseases experts, “too prescriptive.”
Contrary to his proclamation that he has pursued “the most aggressive and comprehensive
effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history,” Trump’s handling of the pandemic has
been a global embarrassment -- one that has forced our closest allies to shut their doors to
American travel. The tragic reality is that, under Trump, America’s Coronavirus response has only
been ‘first’ in reported cases and deaths:
24Graphic Source: The Financial Times, July 8.
● The irony of the dozens of countries now banning Americans from entering in order to
avoid infection from COVID-19 could not be greater. Trump credited his Jan. 31 travel ban
prohibiting any non-U.S. resident coming from China as saving “millions of U.S. lives,”
while in February and March, Trump justified his wall project along the U.S.-Mexico border
as means to “keep COVID out.” Now it is the rest of the world that sees American citizens
as disease spreaders.
And while Trump may wish that we believe his assertion that he has coordinated “a
tremendous amount” with the states, his actions tell a far different story:
● In the early phases of the crisis, Trump resisted repeated and urgent calls to invoke the
Defense Production Act. All the while, U.S. hospitals continued to report severe shortages
of PPE and states competed against each other by purchasing limited supplies from the
private sector, often at inflated prices. Despite the ongoing need, Trump continues to
refuse to fully leverage the DPA.
25● When states challenged Trump’s dangerous directives in April to begin planning to
reopen, Trump claimed he had “total authority” over their decisions, only to backpedal
amidst bipartisan backlash for his legally baseless assertion.
● Rather than relying on America's leading public health and infectious disease experts,
Trump’s national reopening strategy consisted of a toxic patchwork of intuition,
guesswork, and a “not-my-problem” attitude that ultimately led to the catastrophic surge
in infection rates America is witnessing now.
● To “assist” governors with reopening, Trump provided a scant 18-page PowerPoint
presentation, later telling governors that it would be up to states to secure the requisite
COVID tests and PPE needed for them to reach the White House’s own targets. The
administration went so far as to callously, incredulously, and falsely claim that the
Strategic National Stockpile of medical supplies and PPE was not meant to be sent to
states in need.
● Trump warned governors in late May that he would “step-in” if he disagreed with their
state’s pace or strategy of reopening, yet insisted that the consequences of reopening
too quickly would only be on them and not the White House.
Digital Content
● Video: Comparing Trump’s approached to Coronavirus and global warming
● Video: Trump vs. the experts (Facebook)
● Social video: Trump’s Coronavirus lies (Twitter, Facebook)
26TRUMP’S ABYSMAL TESTING
TRACK RECORD
Since the earliest stages of the Coronavirus crisis, experts have stressed that widespread,
rapid and accessible testing must be the top priority of any pandemic mitigation strategy. But
Trump has not only failed to put forward a serious national testing strategy -- he has actively
hampered efforts to do so.
That is why Americans continue to face serious delays and reduced access to testing months
into the pandemic, despite the herculean efforts made by states and hospitals to overcome
the Trump administration's failures and indifference. While other countries like Germany and
South Korea established a whole-of-nation approach to scaling up testing infrastructure, Trump’s
incompetence has left us far behind.
January 2020
● Just one week after the virus’s genetic sequence became available, German researchers
designed an efficient and effective test that served as the basis for the World Health
Organization’s testing kit.
● Meanwhile, the Trump administration never even discussed employing the German-
designed WHO test. Instead, the administration decided to go-it-alone and exclusively
rely on a CDC test that was plagued with problems from its inception.
● While other countries worked quickly to leverage their nation’s private labs, military health
services, and broader medical systems to rapidly expand testing capacity in anticipation
of the community transmission, America did nothing. Instead, Trump gleefully
congratulated Xi for “successfully” containing the virus in Wuhan and claimed his ban on
flights from China would end the virus’s spread.
27February 2020
● In a Senate committee hearing, epidemiologists and other public health experts warned
Congress and the administration that the country had a testing supply chain problem -
particularly when it came to swabs, chemical agents.
● As the virus continued to spread internationally and in the U.S., American testing capacity
paled in comparison to the rest of the world. By late February, the South Korean
government had tested well over 290,000 people and identified 8,000 infections.
Meanwhile, in the United States, which detected its first cases on the same day as South
Korea, the administration had only arranged for 60,000 tests in a country of 330 million.
● Throughout the month, federal officials continued to struggle to develop an effective
American-made test, while the administration refused to use foreign-made tests that were
proven to work. By the end of February, the World Health Organization had shipped
working COVID-19 tests to nearly 60 countries who had requested them, the U.S.
notwithstanding.
● The administration did not initially allow trusted medical centers to roll out tests that they
had designed in-house; tests which were proven to be far more effective than the CDC’s
and became widely available weeks and months later.
March 2020
● Trump falsely claimed that any American who wants a COVID-19 test can get a test. Six
months into the pandemic, many people face significant barriers to testing.
● Numerous public health experts continue to warm the Trump administration that America
was facing a supply chain problem in testing. Former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb
warned publicly that "swabs could be a weak link in broadening testing,” while Rhode
Island Governor Gina Raimondo went on CNN to declare "the problem is swabs."
However the administration remained largely silent and inactive, refusing for weeks to
invoke the Defense Production Act, which would have addressed the testing supply chain
problem.
● Trump promises that thousands of retailer stores like Walmart will offer COVID testing
sites in their parking lots, saying that the “greatest retailers anywhere in the world” would
28“cover this country” in testing locations. NPR reporting in June found that on average,
only 4% of these companies' stores were hosting drive-through testing sites and that
Trump’s promise was by-in-large still unfulfilled.
● Scientists estimate that as many as 8.7 million Americans may have been infected with the
Coronavirus in March, but due to America’s lack of testing capacity at the time, more than
80% of these cases were never diagnosed -- leading to untold asymptomatic spread.
April 2020
● At a briefing on the lack of testing supplies, Trump falsely stated that COVID-19 test swabs
were made “mostly out of cotton,” confusing medical-grade nasopharyngeal swabs and
stating that the shortage was “not a big deal.”
● The Governor of Washington told the media that he had urged the President “weeks ago”
to invoke the Defense Production Act in order to address the looming swab and contact
vial shortage that would prevent wide-spread testing.
● Maryland Governor Larry Hogan had to negotiate an order of 500,000 Coronavirus tests
from the South Korea government -- ordering the Maryland National Guard to protect
them once they arrived so as to avoid seizure from the Trump administration.
May 2020
● Trump made the same false claim he made in early March about testing availability,
stating, "If somebody wants to be tested right now they'll be able to be tested." Yet
multiple state officials were still using stringent eligibility criteria for testing because they
did not yet have the capacity to test asymptomatic cases or even populations beyond
essential workers. Meanwhile, local officials in several jurisdictions complained about a
continuation of testing material shortages.
June 2020
● Trump falsely attributed soaring new COVID-19 cases to increased testing in the United
States. At his rally in Tulsa, he called testing a “double-edged sword” and stated that he
29told his administration to “slow down testing” so that he could point to an artificially lower
case count in the United States.
● Public health experts in hotspot states like Arizona and Florida continued to reiterate
months-old concerns about a lack of testing. Kristen Pogreba-Brown, an epidemiologist at
the University of Arizona, said she found the politicization of public health “disgusting,”
telling reporters that “the fact that we don’t have a federal testing program is pretty
embarrassing” before stating that the University of Arizona had to develop its own in-
house testing system because “we don’t have faith people can go out and get tested
[through the state].”
July 2020
● The Wall Street Journal reported that the exponential surge in Coronavirus cases coupled
with a growing demand for COVID-19 tests is straining the ability of pharmacies and labs
across the country. Labs in CVS Health and Walmart -- which initially promised customers
results in two to three days -- now have an expected wait time between five to eight days
because of backlogs at testing sites and insufficient supply chains.
● Commenting on this new delay in testing results across America, Dr. Anthony Fauci told
reporters, “If you’re going to do contact tracing and the test comes back in five to seven
days, you might as well not do contact tracing because it’s already too late.”
● The Mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance-Bottoms, tweeted that she had to wait eight days
before receiving her test results, which came back positive. The Mayor suggested that the
federal government might do more to help fix the delay problem by sending National
Guard staff to assist testing sites.
Digital Content
● Video on the lack of testing (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook)
30TRUMP LEFT US VULNERABLE
TO A HEALTH CRISIS
Trump has gutted the global health institutions that keep Americans safe. He ignored the well-
established threat of pandemic diseases and dismantled the tools proven to protect lives and
livelihoods during global health crises. Instead of making prudent investments to defend the
American people, or simply not dismantling those investments put down by the Obama-Biden
administration, Trump went out of his way to leave Americans less prepared for a pandemic.
Today, we are all paying the price.
Pre-2016: As a private citizen, Trump could not have been more wrong in his criticism of how
President Obama handled the Ebola crisis (which led to only 2 deaths occurred in the U.S.),
where U.S. leadership galvanized the international response that contained the threat. Instead,
Trump raised mass panic, tweeting “KEEP THEM OUT OF HERE” regarding American health care
workers and attempted to discredit the CDC.
July 2017: The very first budget put forward by the Trump administration called for a 17 percent
slash in funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
December 2017: Trump signed a bill into law that cut $750 million from the Prevention and Public
Health Fund (PPHF), which accounts for 12 percent of the CDC’s budget.
February 2018: Trump signed a bill to cut $1.35 billion from that same fund over the next ten
years.
March 2018: Trump nominated a CDC Director with no experience leading a public health
agency and who has been accused of having an extreme religious agenda as well as engaging in
scientific misconduct.
May 2018: Trump attempted to rescind $252 million from USAID’s International Disaster
Assistance account, reversing course only after frontline healthcare workers protested.
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