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Originally Posted by detbuch
I think we seriously started to rely on them to tell us the truth during the FDR administration. And they have been faking us out ever since. The only thing that ever stopped them was direct adversary confrontation.
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Do you think the IC told him that he should not think for a moment that President Xi is his friend or that it is a good idea?
That the NSC said a pandemic was not a national security threat?
Trump had a very consistent message that China was great and dealing with it as was he in January, February and most of March until he said I knew it was a pandemic all along and declared an Emergency.
On January 24, President Trump thanked President Xi Jinping for “transparency” and complimented the Chinese on their efforts to contain the coronavirus. For the next 50 days Trump proceeded to publicly praise Xi for his work on containing the coronavirus over a dozen times while privately insisting to his national security team that drastic actions were not needed to contain the virus because he trusted the information out of China.
On January 30, in an interview with Fox’s Peter Doocy, Trump said: “And we are in great shape. China is not in great shape right now, unfortunately. But they’re working very hard. We’ll see what happens. But we’re working very closely with China and other countries.”
On January 31, President Trump barred foreign visitors who had visited China in the preceding days from entering the United States, an early decision that he keeps demanding credit for, even though every subsequent action has undermined this initial move. (Like, that the restriction was only on certain types of passengers, not necessarily flights.)
On February 7, Chinese scientist and whistleblower Li Wenliang died. That same day, President Trump praised Xi’s handling of COVID-19, saying:
He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the coronavirus. He feels they are doing very well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days. Nothing is easy, but he will be successful, especially as the weather starts to warm & the virus hopefully becomes weaker, and then gone. Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help!
(It’s worth noting here that on March 19 the Trump campaign issued a press release accusing the Biden campaign of “siding with the Chinese” for noting the number of hospitals they had built, something that—as you see here—Trump lavishly praised Xi for.)
That wasn’t the only praise Trump offered Xi on February 7: He also told North Carolinians Xi “has handled it really well.” Adding that “we’re helping wherever we can. But we have a great relationship. It’s incredible. They respect us again. They didn’t even respect us. What they were doing to us—they didn’t even respect us. They respect us again and we respect them.”
On February 10, China’s death toll had crested 800 making it worse than SARS in the early 2000s. Trump went on now-benched Fox Business host Trish Regan’s nighttime show, where he said this:
Well, I think China is very, you know, professionally run, in the sense that they have everything under control. I really believe they are going to have it under control fairly soon.
On February 14, Trump told the National Border Patrol Council’s members:
I spoke with President Xi of China, and he’s working very hard on this. It’s a tremendous problem. But they’re very capable and they’ll—they’ll get to it. There’s a theory that, in April, when it gets warm—historically, that has been able to kill the virus. So we don’t know yet; we’re not sure yet. But that’s around the corner, so that’ll be a great thing in China and other places.
It’s unclear here whether Trump was referring to the week-old conversation with Xi, or whether the conversation he was describing was more recent.
On February 18, as he was departing for a west coast jaunt, Trump told reporters at Andrews Air Force Base:
I think President Xi is working very hard. As you know, I spoke with him recently. He’s working really hard. It’s a tough problem. I think he’s going to do—look, I’ve seen them build hospitals in a short period of time. I really believe he wants to get that done, and he wants to get it done fast. Yes, I think he’s doing it very professionally. We’re also working with him and helping him, as of the last few days, as you know.
“I’m confident that they’re trying very hard,” Trump told a Phoenix radio station on Feb. 19. “I know President Xi. I get along with him very well. We just made a great trade deal, which is going to be a lot of business for Arizona and every other place. But they are trying very, very hard, and I think the numbers are going to get progressively better as we go along.”
On February 23, President Trump was asked at a Marine One departure before a trip to India whether he thought “President Xi should be doing something different.” Trump replied:
No, I think President Xi is working very, very hard. I spoke to him. He’s working very hard. I think he’s doing a very good job. It’s a big problem. But President Xi loves his country. He’s working very hard to solve the problem and he will solve the problem. Okay?
On February 25, Trump was in India, where he told business leaders that Xi was “working very hard” and that it looked “like they’re getting it under control more and more.” Back in the U.S. on February 26, he reiterated he thought Xi was “working very hard.” This was just as Italy’s outbreak had begun:
I spoke with President Xi. We had a great talk. He’s working very hard, I have to say. He’s working very, very hard. And if you can count on the reports coming out of China, that spread has gone down quite a bit. The infection seems to have gone down over the last two days. As opposed to getting larger, it’s actually gotten smaller. In one instance where we think we can be—it’s somewhat reliable, it seems to have gotten quite a bit smaller.
In that same press conference, Trump told reporters that Xi Jinping was:
. . . working very hard. It would be very easy for me to say, you know—it doesn’t matter what I say, really. I can tell you, he is working—I had a long talk with him the other night. He is working really, really hard. He wants it to go away from China and go away fast, and he wants to get back to business as usual.
It remains unclear from any of these statements when “the other night” was or how many times Trump spoke with Xi in the previous few weeks.
On March 3, Trump visited the National Institutes of Health, where he spent the day with Dr. Anthony Fauci. At a press conference there, Trump was asked about the possibility of further travel restrictions. Here, too, he tossed out some random praise of China:
Well, we’re looking at different areas, and we’ll make that decision with these professionals. We made an early decision based on a little bit of luck, I suspect, but that was the original decision on China itself. And China, in all fairness to them, they never blamed us. It was, you know, a tough decision for them, but they fully understood. They were very reasonable about it.
On March 4, Trump phoned in to Sean Hannity’s show on Fox where he told listeners: “We’re dealing with China. President Xi, who I speak with, President Xi is working very, very hard in China. They have a big problem. But their numbers have gotten much better with respect to the coronavirus, very much better.”
On March 6, President Trump visited the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, where he once again praised China on their progress:
And I’ve heard the numbers are getting much better in China, but I hear the numbers are getting much better in Italy, et cetera, et cetera. But what I hear—so we have 240 cases, 11 deaths. Everything is too much and it’s true. I don’t want 11 deaths. I don’t want any deaths, right? But over the last long period of time, when people have the flu, you have an average of 36,000 people dying. I’ve never heard those numbers. I would—I would’ve been shocked. I would’ve said, “Does anybody die from the flu?” I didn’t know people died from the flu—36,000 people died.
On March 11, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. In response, Trump restricted travel between the E.U. and the United States. He met with banking executives and while China was not a big topic of discussion Trump did say that he thought they were “healing” and floated the possibility that “we could start to think about getting back involved in that part of the world.”
That night, he also addressed the country from the Oval Office and in this brief talk only mentioned China in the context of praising his earlier decision on travel restrictions. Instead he sought to blame the E.U.’s somewhat looser travel restrictions—rather than the Chinese regime—for the virus’s growth in the United States,.
On March 13, President Trump declared a national emergency.
Reported US coronavirus deaths:
Feb. 16: 0 deaths
Mar. 16: 86 deaths
Apr. 16: 33,268 deaths