theatlantic--2020-04-09--All the President’s Lies About the Coronavirus

When : Wednesday , March 11 The claim : The United States would suspend “ all travel from Europe , except the United Kingdom , for the next 30 days , ” Trump announced in an Oval Office address .
The truth : The travel restriction would not apply to U.S. citizens , legal permanent residents , or their families returning from Europe .
At first , it applied specifically to the 26 European countries that make up the Schengen Area , not all of Europe .
Trump later announced the inclusion of the United Kingdom and Ireland in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ same address , Trump said the travel restrictions would “ not only apply to the tremendous amount of trade and cargo but various other things as we get approval.
” The truth : Trump followed up in a tweet , explaining that trade and cargo would not be subject to the restrictions .
When : Thursday , March 12 The claim : All U.S. citizens arriving from Europe would be subject to medical screening , COVID-19 testing , and quarantine if necessary .
“ If an American is coming back or anybody is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” Trump said .
“ We have a tremendous testing setup where people coming in have to be tested … We ’ re not putting them on planes if it shows positive , but if they do come here , we ’ re quarantining.
” The truth : Testing is already severely limited in the United States .
It is not true that all Americans returning to the country are being tested , nor that anyone is being forced to quarantine , CNN has reported .
When : Tuesday , March 31 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Europe ” with a travel ban .
“ We started with certain parts of Italy , and then all of Italy .
Then we saw Spain .
Then I said , ‘ Stop Europe ; let ’ s stop Europe .
We have to stop them from coming here.
’ ” The truth : The travel ban applied to the Schengen Area , as well as the United Kingdom and Ireland , and not all of Europe as he claimed .
Additionally , Trump is wrong about the United States rolling out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ did issue advisories in late February cautioning Americans against travel to the Lombardy region of Italy before issuing a general “ Do Not Travel ” warning on March 19 .
But the U.S. never placed individual bans on Italy and Spain .
When : Multiple times The claim : “ Everybody thought I was wrong ” about implementing restrictions on travelers from China , and “ most people felt they should not close it down—that we shouldn ’ t close down to China.
” The truth : While the WHO did say it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump ’ s own top health officials have made clear that the travel ban was the “ uniform ” recommendation of the Department of Health and Human Services .
Fauci and Deborah Birx , the coordinator of the coronavirus task force , both praised the decision too .
On Taking the Pandemic Seriously When : Tuesday , March 17 The claim : “ I ’ ve always known this is a real—this is a pandemic .
I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic … I ’ ve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The truth : Trump has repeatedly downplayed the significance of COVID-19 as outbreaks began stateside .
From calling criticism of his handling of the virus a “ hoax , ” to comparing the coronavirus to a common flu , to worrying about letting sick Americans off cruise ships because they would increase the number of confirmed cases , Trump has used his public statements to send mixed messages and sow doubt about the outbreak ’ s seriousness .

Updated at 2:20 p.m. ET on November 2, 2020.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly lied about the coronavirus pandemic and the country’s preparation for this once-in-a-generation crisis.
Here, a collection of the biggest lies he’s told as the nation endures a public-health and economic calamity. This post will be updated as needed.
On the Nature of the Outbreak
When: Friday, February 7, and Wednesday, February 19
The claim: The coronavirus would weaken “when we get into April, in the warmer weather—that has a very negative effect on that, and that type of a virus.”
The truth: When Trump made this claim, it was too early to tell whether the virus’s spread would be dampened by warmer conditions, though public-health experts and epidemiologists were immediately skeptical of Trump’s comment. But the spring and summer have passed, and the pandemic is still raging.
When: Thursday, February 27
The claim: The outbreak would be temporary: “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle—it will disappear.”
The truth: Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned days later that he was concerned that “as the next week or two or three go by, we’re going to see a lot more community-related cases.” He was right—the virus has not disappeared.
When: Multiple times
The claim: If the economic shutdown continues, deaths by suicide “definitely would be in far greater numbers than the numbers that we’re talking about” for COVID-19 deaths.
The truth: More than 200,000 Americans have died from COVID-19. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide is one of the leading causes of death in the United States. But the number of people who died by suicide in 2017, for example, was roughly 47,000, nowhere near the COVID-19 numbers. Estimates of the mental-health toll of the Great Recession are mixed. A 2014 study tied more than 10,000 suicides in Europe and North America to the financial crisis. But a larger analysis in 2017 found that although the rate of suicide was increasing in the United States, the increase could not be directly tied to the recession and was attributable to broader socioeconomic conditions predating the downturn.
When: Multiple times
The claim: “Coronavirus numbers are looking MUCH better, going down almost everywhere,” and cases are “coming way down.”
The truth: When Trump made these claims in May, coronavirus cases were either increasing or plateauing in the majority of American states. Over the summer, the country saw a second surge even greater than its first in the spring.
Juliette Kayyem: The emotionally challenging next phase of the pandemic
When: Wednesday, June 17
The claim: The pandemic is “fading away. It’s going to fade away.”
The truth: Trump made this claim ahead of his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, when the country was still seeing at least 20,000 new daily cases and a second spike in infections was beginning.
When: Thursday, July 2
The claim: The pandemic is “getting under control.”
The truth: Trump’s claim came as the country’s daily cases doubled to about 50,000, a higher count than was seen at the beginning of the pandemic, and as the number continued to rise, fueled by infections in the South and the West.
When: Saturday, July 4
The claim: “99%” of COVID-19 cases are “totally harmless.”
The truth: The virus can still cause tremendous suffering if it doesn’t kill a patient, and the WHO has said that about 15 percent of COVID-19 cases can be severe, with 5 percent being critical. Fauci has rejected Trump’s claim, saying the evidence shows that the virus “can make you seriously ill” even if it doesn’t kill you.
When: Monday, July 6
The claim: “We now have the lowest Fatality (Mortality) Rate in the World.”
The truth: The U.S. had neither the lowest mortality rate nor the lowest case-fatality rate when Trump made this claim. As of July 13, the case-fatality rate—the ratio of deaths to confirmed COVID-19 cases—was 4.1 percent, which placed the U.S. solidly in the middle of global rankings. At the time, it had the world’s ninth-worst mortality rate, with 41.33 deaths per 100,000 people, according to Johns Hopkins University.
When: Multiple times
The claim: Mexico is partly to blame for COVID-19 surges in the Southwest.
The truth: Even before Latin America’s COVID-19 cases began to rise, the U.S. and Mexico had jointly agreed in March to restrict nonessential land travel between the two countries, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection says illegal border crossings are down compared with last year. Health experts say blaming Mexican immigrants for surges is misguided, especially when most of the individuals crossing the border are U.S. citizens who live nearby.
When: Multiple times
The claim: Children are “virtually immune” to COVID-19.
The truth: The science is not definitive, but that doesn’t mean children are immune. Studies in the U.S. and China have suggested that kids are less likely than adults to be infected, and more likely to have mild symptoms, but can still spread the virus to their family members and others. The CDC has said that about 7 percent of COVID-19 cases and less than 0.1 percent of COVID-19-related deaths have occurred in children.
When: Thursday, August 27
The claim: The U.S. has “among the lowest case-fatality rates of any major country anywhere in the world.”
The truth: When Trump said this, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and India all had lower case-fatality rates than the U.S., which sat in the middle of performance rankings among all nations and among the 20 countries hardest hit by the virus.
When: Thursday, August 27
The claim: Trump “launched the largest national mobilization since World War II” against COVID-19, and America “developed, from scratch, the largest and most advanced testing system in the world.”
The truth: These claims are incorrect and misleading. The federal government’s coronavirus response has been roundly criticized as a failure because of flawed and delayed testing, entrenched inequality that has amplified the virus’s effects, and chaotic federal leadership that’s left much of the country’s response up to the states to handle. Trump vacillated on fully invoking the Defense Production Act in March, set off international panic when he mistakenly said he was banning all travel from European nations, and was slow to support social-distancing measures nationwide. Widespread use of the DPA was still rare in July, despite continued shortages of medical supplies.
Another claim: Trump celebrated a gain of 9 million jobs as “a record in the history of our country” and said that the United States had experienced “the smallest economic contraction of any major Western nation.”
The truth: The country did gain 9 million jobs from May to July—after losing more than 20 million from February to April, during the pandemic’s first surge. And more than a dozen developed countries have recorded smaller economic contractions than America’s recession.
When: Multiple times
The claim: America is “rounding the corner” and “rounding the final turn” of the pandemic.
The truth: Trump made these claims before and after the country registered 200,000 coronavirus deaths. As the winter approaches, the number of coronavirus cases is increasing in almost every state; in the last week of October, cases rose faster than reported tests in 47 of the 50 states, according to the COVID Tracking Project.
When: Multiple times
The claim: The media is overblowing fears about the virus ahead of Election Day.
The truth: There is no media conspiracy to hype up the virus threat. Cases and hospitalizations are rising across the country, and America set and broke multiple daily case records during the last week of October, nearing 100,000 cases in a single day on Friday.
When: Multiple times
The claim: "What happens is, you get better” after being sick with COVID-19. “That's what happens: You get better.”
The truth: While most cases of COVID-19 are mild, that doesn’t negate the risk the virus poses. As of the beginning of November, it has killed more than 220,000 Americans.
Another claim: “You get better and then you’re immune.”
The truth: Although similar viruses provide some short-term immunity after recovery, doctors don’t yet know how long COVID-19 immunity lasts, especially given anecdotal reports of reinfection. Trump’s claim also ignores the long-term side effects of contracting COVID-19 that so-called long-haulers have reported.
When: Multiple times
The claim: A CDC study shows that “85 percent of the people wearing masks catch” the virus.
The truth: The CDC study that the president cited in interviews does not suggest that people who wear masks get the virus at higher rates than those who don’t, CNN reported. The lie also distorts the purpose of mask-wearing, which is chiefly to protect other people from the virus, not to protect only the mask-wearer herself.
Blaming the Obama Administration
When: Wednesday, March 4
The claim: The Trump White House rolled back Food and Drug Administration regulations that limited the kind of laboratory tests states could run and how they could conduct them. “The Obama administration made a decision on testing that turned out to be very detrimental to what we’re doing,” Trump said.
The truth: The Obama administration drafted, but never implemented, changes to rules that regulate laboratory tests run by states. Trump’s policy change relaxed an FDA requirement that would have forced private labs to wait for FDA authorization to conduct their own, non-CDC-approved coronavirus tests.
When: Friday, March 13
The claim: The Obama White House’s response to the H1N1 pandemic was “a full scale disaster, with thousands dying, and nothing meaningful done to fix the testing problem, until now.”
The truth: Barack Obama declared a public-health emergency two weeks after the first U.S. cases of H1N1 were reported, in California. (Trump declared a national emergency more than seven weeks after the first domestic COVID-19 case was reported, in Washington State.) While testing is a problem now, it wasn’t back in 2009. The challenge then was vaccine development: Production was delayed and the vaccine wasn’t distributed until the outbreak was already waning.
When: Multiple times
The claim: The Trump White House “inherited” a “broken,” “bad,” and “obsolete” test for the coronavirus.
The truth: The novel coronavirus did not exist in humans during the Obama administration. Public-health experts agree that, because of that fact, the CDC could not have produced a test, and thus a new test had to be developed this year.
Read: Joe Biden’s invisible pandemic expert
When: Multiple times
The claim: The Obama administration left Trump “bare” and “empty” shelves of medical supplies in the national strategic stockpile.
The truth: The 2009 H1N1 outbreak did deplete the N95 mask supply and was never replenished, but the Obama administration did not leave the stockpile empty of other materials. While the stockpile has never been funded at the levels some experts have requested, its former director said in 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic, that it was well-equipped. (The outbreak has since eaten away at its reserves.)
When: Sunday, May 10
The claim: Referring to criticism of his administration’s response, Trump tweeted: “Compare that to the Obama/Sleepy Joe disaster known as H1N1 Swine Flu. Poor marks ... didn’t have a clue!”
The truth: It is misleading to compare COVID-19 to H1N1 and to call the Obama administration’s response a disaster, as my colleague Peter Nicholas has reported. In 2009, the CDC quickly flagged the new flu strain in California and began releasing antiflu drugs from the national stockpile two weeks later. A vaccine was available in six months.
Another claim: Trump later attacked “Joe Biden’s handling of the H1N1 Swine Flu.”
The truth: Biden was not responsible for the federal government’s response to the H1N1 outbreak, as Nicholas has also explained.
On Coronavirus Testing
When: Friday, March 6, and Monday, May 11
The claim: “Anybody that needs a test, gets a test. We—they’re there. They have the tests. And the tests are beautiful” and “If somebody wants to be tested right now, they’ll be able to be tested.”
The truth: Trump made these two claims two months apart, but the truth was the same both times: The U.S. did not have enough testing.
When: Wednesday, March 11
The claim: In an Oval Office address, Trump said that private-health-insurance companies had “agreed to waive all co-payments for coronavirus treatments, extend insurance coverage to these treatments, and to prevent surprise medical billing.”
The truth: Insurers agreed only to absorb the cost of coronavirus testing—waiving co-pays and deductibles for getting the test. The Families First Coronavirus Response Act, the second coronavirus-relief bill passed by Congress, later mandated that COVID-19 testing be made free. The federal government has not required insurance companies to cover follow-up treatments, though some providers announced in late March that they will pay for treatments. The costs of other non-coronavirus testing or treatment incurred by patients who have COVID-19 or are trying to get a diagnosis aren’t waived either. And as for surprise medical billing? Mitigating it would require the cooperation of insurers, doctors, and hospitals.
Read: The dangerous delays in U.S. coronavirus testing haven’t stopped
When: Friday, March 13
The claim: Google engineers are building a website to help Americans determine whether they need testing for the coronavirus and to direct them to their nearest testing site.
The truth: The announcement was news to Google itself—the website Trump (and other administration officials) described was actually being built by Verily, a division of Alphabet, the parent company of Google. The Verge first reported on Trump’s error, citing a Google representative who confirmed that Verily was working on a “triage website” with limited coverage for the San Francisco Bay Area. But since then, Google has pivoted to fulfill Trump’s public proclamation, saying it would speed up the development of a new, separate website while Verily worked on finishing its project, The Washington Post reported.
When: Tuesday, March 24, and Wednesday, March 25
The claim: The United States has outpaced South Korea’s COVID-19 testing: “We’re going up proportionally very rapidly,” Trump said during a Fox News town hall.
The truth: When the president made this claim, testing in the U.S. was severely lagging behind that in South Korea. As of March 25, South Korea had conducted about five times as many tests as a proportion of its population relative to the United States. For updated data from each country, see the COVID-19 Tracking Project and the database maintained by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
When: Monday, May 11
The claim: America has “developed a testing capacity unmatched and unrivaled anywhere in the world, and it’s not even close.”
The truth: At the time, the United States was still not testing enough people and was lagging behind the testing and tracing capabilities that other countries had developed. The president’s testing czar, Brett Giroir, and Fauci confirmed the need for more testing at a May 12 Senate hearing.
Another claim: The United States has conducted more testing “than all other countries together!”
The truth: By May 18, when Trump last made this claim, the U.S. had conducted more tests than any other country. But it had not conducted more tests than the rest of the world combined. (As of May 27, more than 14 million tests have been administered in America.)
When: Multiple times
The claim: “Cases are going up in the U.S. because we are testing far more than any other country.”
The truth: COVID-19 cases were not rising because of “our big-number testing.” Outside the Northeast, the share of tests conducted that came back positive was increasing in the summer, with the sharpest spike happening in southern states. In some states, such as Arizona and Florida, the number of new cases being reported was outpacing any increase in the states’ testing ability. And as states set new daily case records and reported increasing hospitalizations, all signs pointed to a worsening crisis.
When: Multiple times
The claim: “The Cases are up because TESTING is way up”
The truth: The president made this claim multiple times during the summer surge of the pandemic, and is repeating that lie now as the country experiences a third surge. In reality, positive cases are outpacing tests around the country, the COVID Tracking Project reports, following a similar trajectory as the summer surge.
On Travel Bans and Travelers
When: Wednesday, March 11
The claim: The United States would suspend “all travel from Europe, except the United Kingdom, for the next 30 days,” Trump announced in an Oval Office address.
The truth: The travel restriction would not apply to U.S. citizens, legal permanent residents, or their families returning from Europe. At first, it applied specifically to the 26 European countries that make up the Schengen Area, not all of Europe. Trump later announced the inclusion of the United Kingdom and Ireland in the ban.
Another claim: In the same address, Trump said the travel restrictions would “not only apply to the tremendous amount of trade and cargo but various other things as we get approval.”
The truth: Trump followed up in a tweet, explaining that trade and cargo would not be subject to the restrictions.
When: Thursday, March 12
The claim: All U.S. citizens arriving from Europe would be subject to medical screening, COVID-19 testing, and quarantine if necessary. “If an American is coming back, or anybody is coming back, we’re testing,” Trump said. “We have a tremendous testing setup where people coming in have to be tested … We’re not putting them on planes if it shows positive, but if they do come here, we’re quarantining.”
The truth: Testing was already severely limited in the United States when Trump claimed this in the spring. It was not true that all Americans returning to the country were being tested, nor that anyone was being forced to quarantine, CNN reported.
Read: Trump’s European travel ban doesn’t make sense
When: Tuesday, March 31
The claim: “We stopped all of Europe” with a travel ban. “We started with certain parts of Italy, and then all of Italy. Then we saw Spain. Then I said, ‘Stop Europe; let’s stop Europe. We have to stop them from coming here.’”
The truth: The travel ban applied to the Schengen Area, as well as the United Kingdom and Ireland, and not all of Europe as he claimed. Additionally, Trump is wrong about the United States rolling out a piecemeal ban. The State Department did issue advisories in late February cautioning Americans against travel to the Lombardy region of Italy before issuing a general “Do Not Travel” warning on March 19. But the U.S. never placed individual bans on Italy and Spain.
When: Multiple times
The claim: “Everybody thought I was wrong” about implementing restrictions on travelers from China, and “most people felt they should not close it down—that we shouldn’t close down to China.”
The truth: While the WHO did say it opposed travel bans on China generally, Trump’s own top health officials have made clear that the travel ban was the “uniform” recommendation of the Department of Health and Human Services. Fauci and Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the coronavirus task force, both praised the decision too.
When: Multiple times
The claim: The Trump administration’s travel restrictions on China were a “ban” that closed up the “entire” United States and “kept China out.”
The truth: Nearly 40,000 people traveled from China to the United States from February 2, when Trump’s travel restrictions went into effect, to April 4, The New York Times reported. Those rules also do not apply to all people: American citizens, green-card holders and their relatives, and people on flights coming from Macau and Hong Kong are not included in the “ban.”
On Taking the Pandemic Seriously
When: Tuesday, March 17
The claim: “I’ve always known this is a real—this is a pandemic. I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic … I’ve always viewed it as very serious.”
The truth: Trump has repeatedly downplayed the significance of COVID-19 as outbreaks began stateside. From calling criticism of his handling of the virus a “hoax,” to comparing the coronavirus to a common flu, to worrying about letting sick Americans off cruise ships because they would increase the number of confirmed cases, Trump has used his public statements to send mixed messages and sow doubt about the outbreak’s seriousness.
When: Thursday, March 26
The claim: This kind of pandemic “was something nobody thought could happen … Nobody would have ever thought a thing like this could have happened.”
The truth: Experts both inside and outside the federal government sounded the alarm many times in the past decade about the potential for a devastating global pandemic, as my colleague Uri Friedman has reported. Two years ago, my colleague Ed Yong explored the legacy of Ebola outbreaks—including the devastating 2014 epidemic—to evaluate how ready the U.S. was for a pandemic. Ebola hardly impacted America—but it revealed how unprepared the country was.
On COVID-19 Treatments and Vaccines
When: Monday, March 2
The claim: Pharmaceutical companies are going “to have vaccines, I think, relatively soon.”
The truth: The president’s own experts told him during a White House meeting with pharmaceutical leaders earlier the same day that a vaccine could take a year to 18 months to develop. In response, he said he would prefer that it take only a few months. He later claimed, at a campaign rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, that a vaccine would be ready “soon.” Many months later, this is still not true.
When: Thursday, March 19
The claim: At a press briefing with his coronavirus task force, Trump said the FDA had approved the antimalarial drug chloroquine to treat COVID-19. “Normally the FDA would take a long time to approve something like that, and it’s—it was approved very, very quickly and it’s now approved by prescription,” he said.
The truth: FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, who was at the briefing, quickly clarified that the drug still had to be tested in a clinical setting. An FDA representative later told Bloomberg that the drug has not been approved for COVID-19 use, though a doctor could still prescribe it for that purpose. Later that same day, Fauci told CNN that there is no “magic drug” to cure COVID-19: “Today, there are no proven safe and effective therapies for the coronavirus.”
When: Friday, April 24
The claim: Trump was being “sarcastic” when he suggested in a briefing on April 23 that his medical experts should research the use of powerful light and injected disinfectants to treat COVID-19.
The truth: Trump’s tone did not seem sarcastic when he made the apparent suggestion to inject disinfectants. Turning to Birx and a Department of Homeland Security science-and-technology official, he mused: “I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning? … It would be interesting to check that.” When he walked this statement back the next day, he added that he was only asking his experts “to look into whether or not sun and disinfectant on the hands [work].”
When: Friday, May 8
The claim: The coronavirus is “going to go away without a vaccine … and we’re not going to see it again, hopefully, after a period of time.”
The truth: Fauci has repeatedly said that the coronavirus’s sudden disappearance “is just not going to happen.” Until the country has “a scientifically sound, safe, and effective vaccine,” Fauci said in May, the pandemic will not be over.
Read: Why does the president keep pushing a malaria drug?
When: Multiple times
The claim: Taking hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 is safe and effective. “I happen to be a believer in hydroxy. I used it. I had no problem. I happen to be a believer,” Trump said on one occasion. “It doesn’t hurt people,” he commented on another.
The truth: Trump’s own FDA has warned against taking the antimalarial drug with or without the antibiotic azithromycin, which Trump has also promoted. Several large observational studies in New York, France, and China have concluded that the drug has no benefit for COVID-19 patients, and Fauci and Trump’s testing czar, Brett Giroir, have also cautioned against it as the president has repeated this claim in recent months.
Another claim: “One bad” study from the Department of Veterans Affairs that found no benefit among veterans who took hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 was run by “people that aren’t big Trump fans.” The study “was a Trump-enemy statement.”
The truth: There’s no evidence that the study was a political plot orchestrated by Trump opponents, and it reached similar conclusions as other observational reports. The VA study was led by independent researchers from the University of Virginia and the University of South Carolina with a grant from the National Institutes of Health.
Another claim: Many frontline doctors and workers are taking hydroxychloroquine to prevent COVID-19.
The truth: Multiple trials are under way to determine if health-care workers should take the drug as a preventative. But there are no conclusive numbers for how many workers are taking the drug outside of those studies.
When: Thursday, August 6
The claim: A coronavirus vaccine could be ready by Election Day.
The truth: The timeline Trump proposes contradicts health experts’ consensus that early 2021 is likely the soonest a vaccine could be widely available.
When: Tuesday, September 29
The claim: “We’re weeks away from a vaccine,” Trump said at the first debate.
The truth: Redfield has said a COVID-19 vaccine may not be widely available to the American public until the summer of next year. Two of the three drug companies working on a vaccine have said they hope to have only initial clinical-trial results by the end of this year.
When: Multiple times
The claim: A CDC study shows that “85 percent of the people wearing masks catch” the virus.
The truth: The CDC study that the president cited in interviews does not suggest that people who wear masks get the virus at higher rates than those who don’t, CNN reported. The lie also distorts the purpose of mask-wearing, which is chiefly to protect other people from the virus, not to protect only the mask-wearer herself.
On the Defense Production Act
When: Friday, March 20
The claim: Trump twice said during a task-force briefing that he had invoked the Defense Production Act, a Korean War–era law that enables the federal government to order private industry to produce certain items and materials for national use. He also said the federal government was already using its authority under the law: “We have a lot of people working very hard to do ventilators and various other things.”
The truth: Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Peter Gaynor told CNN on March 22 that the president has not actually used the DPA to order private companies to produce anything. Shortly after that, Trump backtracked, saying that he had not compelled private companies to take action. Then, on March 24, Gaynor told CNN that FEMA plans to use the DPA to allocate 60,000 test kits. Trump tweeted afterward that the DPA would not be used.
Jane Chong: How to actually use the Defense Production Act
When: Saturday, March 21
The claim: Automobile companies that have volunteered to manufacture medical equipment, such as ventilators, are “making them right now.”
The truth: Ford and General Motors, which Trump mentioned at a task-force briefing the same day, announced earlier in March that they had halted all factory production in North America and were likely months away from beginning production of ventilators, representatives told the Associated Press. Since then, Ford CEO James Hackett told CNN that the auto company will begin to work with 3M to produce respirators and with General Electric to assemble ventilators. GM said it will explore the possibility of producing ventilators in an Indiana factory. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whose company Trump highlighted in a tweet, has said that the company is “working on ventilators” but that they cannot be produced “instantly.”
On States’ Resources
When: Tuesday, March 24
The claim: Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York passed on an opportunity to purchase 16,000 ventilators at a low cost in 2015, Trump said during the Fox News town hall.
The truth: Trump seems to have gleaned this claim from a Gateway Pundit article. That piece, in turn, cites a syndicated column from Betsy McCaughey, a former lieutenant governor of New York, which includes a figure close to 16,000. The number comes from a 2015 report from the state’s health department that provided guidance for how New York could handle a possible flu pandemic. The report notes that the state would need 15,783 more ventilators than it had at the time to aid patients during “an influenza pandemic on the scale of the 1918 pandemic.” The report does not include a recommendation to Cuomo for additional purchases or stockpiling. Trump “obviously didn’t read the document he’s citing,” a Cuomo representative said in a statement.
Another claim: Trump also repeated a claim from the Gateway Pundit article that Cuomo’s office established “death panels” and “lotteries” as part of the state’s pandemic response.
The truth: The 2015 report and the accompanying press release announced updated guidelines for hospitals to follow to allocate ventilators. The guidelines “call for a triage officer or triage committee to determine who receives or continues to receive ventilator therapy” and describes how a random lottery allocation might work. (Neither should be the first options for deciding care, the report notes.) Cuomo never established a lottery.
When: Sunday, March 29
The claim: Trump “didn’t say” that governors do not need all the medical equipment they are requesting from the federal government. And he “didn’t say” that governors should be more appreciative of the help.
The truth: The president told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Thursday, March 26, that “a lot of equipment’s being asked for that I don’t think they’ll need,” referring to requests from the governors of Michigan, New York, and Washington. He also said, during a Friday, March 27, task-force briefing, that he wanted state leaders “to be appreciative … We’ve done a great job.” He added that he wasn’t talking about himself, but about others within the federal government working to combat the pandemic.
When: Sunday, March 29, and Monday, March 30
The claim: Hospitals are reporting an artificially inflated need for masks and equipment, items that might be “going out the back door,” Trump said on two separate days. He also said he was not talking about hoarding: “I think maybe it’s worse than hoarding.”
The truth: There is no evidence to show that hospitals are maliciously hoarding or inflating their need for masks and personal protective equipment when reporting shortages in supplies. Although Cuomo reported anecdotal stories of thefts from hospitals early in March, he was referring to opportunists trying to price-gouge early in the pandemic. Reuters has reported a handful of stories of nurses hiding masks to conserve supplies amid shortages, but not wide-scale thefts as Trump claimed.
On China
When: Tuesday, April 14
The claim: Asked about his past praise of China and its transparency, Trump said that he hadn’t “talk[ed] about China’s transparency.”
The truth: Trump lauded the country in tweets he sent in late January and early February. In one, he highlighted the Chinese government’s “transparency” about the coronavirus outbreak.
Read: How China is planning to win back the world
When: Friday, May 29
The claim: The WHO ignored “credible reports” of the coronavirus’s spread in Wuhan, the Chinese city that first reported the new virus, including those published in The Lancet medical journal in December.
The truth: The Lancet said it did not publish such reports in December. Its first reports on the virus’s spread in Wuhan were published on January 24.
Another claim: Taiwanese officials had warned the WHO about human-to-human transmission of a new virus by December 31.
The truth: Taiwan did not cite “human to human” transmission in the communications Trump referenced, but it did ask for more information and compared the virus to SARS.
Another claim: In mid-January, the WHO said the coronavirus could not be transmitted between humans.
The truth: The WHO did say on January 12 that early investigations by China could find “no clear evidence” of human-to-human transmission in Wuhan, but it did not rule such transmission out. Two days later, a WHO official said during a press conference that “it is possible that there is limited human-to-human transmission” among families, and warned hospitals around the world to prepare for a greater outbreak.
On Democrats
When: Multiple times
The claim: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged people to attend “parties” and a parade in San Francisco’s Chinatown to “show that this thing doesn’t exist.”
The truth: Pelosi did visit San Francisco’s Chinatown in late February to encourage residents not to fear the coronavirus in the city. “Precautions have been taken” and the city was “on top of the situation,” she said. But Pelosi did not urge people to attend a parade or parties. San Francisco reported its first case of COVID-19 on March 5, a week later, and the Bay Area ordered residents to shelter in place three weeks after the speaker’s visit.
Another claim: Pelosi was “dancing in the streets of Chinatown, trying to say, ‘It’s okay to come to the United States. It’s fine. It’s wonderful. Come on in. Bring your infection with you,’” Trump said in May.
The truth: Trump is embellishing his original lie: Pelosi was not dancing in Chinatown or urging sick people to bring the coronavirus to the United States.
When: Thursday, August 27, and Tuesday, September 29
The claim: Joe Biden wants an economic shutdown: “He wants to shut down this country, and I want to keep it open,” Trump claimed at the first presidential debate.
The truth: Biden never said this. He has said repeatedly that he plans to “listen to the scientists” when deciding on policies to control the virus. When asked by ABC’s David Muir in August if he would support an economic shutdown, Biden said he “would be prepared to do whatever it takes to save lives.” But in September, he was more specific, saying, “There is going to be no need, in my view, to be able to shut down the whole economy.”
Another claim: Biden wants to “delay the vaccine.”
The truth: Though Biden has claimed that Trump has put political pressure on scientists to accelerate the approval and rollout of a COVID-19 vaccine, the former vice president has never expressed a desire to delay it. He has asked for “total transparency” from drug companies and scientists at the FDA and the CDC about any vaccine, and has called for independent verification of the vaccine’s efficacy.
Read: Joe Biden doesn’t have a plan for that
When: Multiple times.
The claim: Biden called Trump “xenophobic” after the president announced travel restrictions on China in January.
The truth: Biden did refer to the president’s “record of hysteria and xenophobia—hysterical xenophobia—and fearmongering” during a campaign stop on the same day Trump announced his restrictions, but he did not refer to Trump’s announcement specifically. Biden’s campaign told The Washington Post that he was not criticizing Trump’s travel policies, but rather reiterating an argument against Trump’s record that he’d made before.
On Protests
When: Sunday, April 19 and Tuesday, April 21
The claim: Protesters who gathered in a handful of states over the weekend to oppose social distancing were “doing social distancing” themselves and “were all six feet apart.”
The truth: Protesters have clogged streets in at least seven states after an April 15 demonstration at the Michigan state capitol grabbed national attention. In California, Colorado, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, demonstrators did not seem to be following the CDC’s safety guidelines, local news outlets reported, and photos and videos from the ground show tightly packed protests.
Another claim: Racial-justice protests and demonstrations fueled a surge in coronavirus cases.
The truth: There is no evidence to support Trump’s claim, though epidemiologists did fear at first that protests would trigger more infections. A recent study by Northeastern, Harvard, and Northwestern suggests that widespread mask wearing and the outdoor nature of the protests mitigated the spread. Some economists have argued that the protests in more than 300 U.S. cities might have actually encouraged more Americans to stay home during the civil unrest.


Not Him, Them

Yesterday afternoon , once Sanders made his exit official , I texted Larry Cohen , Sanders ’ s friend and the president of the political group the senator founded , Our Revolution , to ask whom he saw as the next leader of the movement .
“ Too hard !
” Cohen wrote back .
He said he ’ s optimistic about grassroots groups mobilizing to advance Sanders ’ s agenda .
But isn ’ t the lack of a clear successor a problem ?
His response : “ Not yet.
” Read : What Sanders supporters are telling themselves @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sanders-style progressivism .
Without the coronavirus pandemic , the past month would have been politically humiliating for the senator .
For all the boasting that he did in his exit speech about how many people agreed with him on the issues , he didn ’ t get the votes .
His theory of the race , and of Democratic primary voters , was wrong .
He managed to do worse in this campaign , which he came into as a front-runner with huge support and name recognition , than he did as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spent significantly more money than Biden , who ’ s now the presumptive Democratic nominee .
In fact , he spent more money losing the presidential nomination than anyone in history other than Michael Bloomberg .
But you don ’ t have to be out of a job , or be trying to homeschool your kids , or be thanking minimum-wage workers in face masks for driving the trucks and stocking the grocery shelves while billionaires hole up at their beach compounds with maid service , to know that the world is going @ @ @ @ @ @ @ already .
Nationalized health care , a Green New Deal , and student-loan forgiveness used to be as hard to imagine happening as the stockpiling of toilet paper .
Congress recently passed the biggest relief package in history , and it ’ s clearly going to do more , soon .
Unemployment is headed toward Great Depression levels .
Ideas that the supposedly smartest people in Washington , in both major parties , wrote off as too expensive or impractical are getting pulled into the mainstream .
( “ When we talk about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ talking about hedge-fund managers , ” Sanders put it in an interview with the late-night host Stephen Colbert yesterday evening . )
The crisis has prompted the broadest embrace of New Deal–style policies since the New Deal itself , Representative Chuy Garcia of Illinois , a Sanders supporter , told me : “ The rest of society is being refocused on issues that working-class people have been talking about for a long time.
” Garcia said he didn ’ t think that much of what was in the stimulus bill would have been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his campaigns .
That ’ s the kind of optimism Sanders ’ s allies are holding on to as they try to look ahead .
“ It is a movement moment , because basic things are in question , ” Cohen said .
“ Can we wrestle with some things together ?
Even though we ’ re isolated socially , we ’ re all experiencing the same thing .
To the extent that I have any optimism , it ’ s that people are hungry , they want to do something .
”

Bernie Sanders will never be president. He won’t be Joe Biden’s pick for vice president. He’s not joining the Cabinet. He’s run his last race—he’ll be 82 when his current Senate term is up in 2024, and people close to him feel sure that will be it for him.
Who will be on the ballot in 2024, trying to continue the movement he sparked? Who will take Sanders’s place in progressives’ hearts and on their T-shirts? Who could connect as viscerally, as widely, with such a force of personality? Look at the people who supported Sanders’s campaign. Could anyone else in American politics have been embraced by Evo Morales and Jack Nicholson; Jesse Jackson and the 37-year-old mayor of Jackson, Mississippi; hipster progressives and blue-collar workers; Ben & Jerry and Cardi B?
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York congresswoman and political sensation, gets named the most. Other members of “the squad”—Representatives Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley—also come up, as do more establishment-adjacent figures like Pramila Jayapal and Mark Pocan, the co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. RoseAnn DeMoro, the former nurses’ union head and one of Sanders’s longest-term and most loyal supporters, told me that she considers California Governor Gavin Newsom, a lifelong elected official, to be Sanders’s heir apparent: “They won’t be able to portray Gavin as an outsider in the way they try to do other progressives.” Other people have mentioned Stacey Abrams, the losing candidate in Georgia’s most recent gubernatorial race.
Yesterday afternoon, once Sanders made his exit official, I texted Larry Cohen, Sanders’s friend and the president of the political group the senator founded, Our Revolution, to ask whom he saw as the next leader of the movement.
“Too hard!” Cohen wrote back. He said he’s optimistic about grassroots groups mobilizing to advance Sanders’s agenda. But isn’t the lack of a clear successor a problem? His response: “Not yet.”
Read: What Sanders supporters are telling themselves now
This is an odd moment for Sanders-style progressivism. Without the coronavirus pandemic, the past month would have been politically humiliating for the senator. For all the boasting that he did in his exit speech about how many people agreed with him on the issues, he didn’t get the votes. His theory of the race, and of Democratic primary voters, was wrong. He managed to do worse in this campaign, which he came into as a front-runner with huge support and name recognition, than he did as a much lesser-known candidate in 2016. He spent significantly more money than Biden, who’s now the presumptive Democratic nominee. In fact, he spent more money losing the presidential nomination than anyone in history other than Michael Bloomberg.
But you don’t have to be out of a job, or be trying to homeschool your kids, or be thanking minimum-wage workers in face masks for driving the trucks and stocking the grocery shelves while billionaires hole up at their beach compounds with maid service, to know that the world is going to be different now. It is already. Nationalized health care, a Green New Deal, and student-loan forgiveness used to be as hard to imagine happening as the stockpiling of toilet paper. Congress recently passed the biggest relief package in history, and it’s clearly going to do more, soon. Unemployment is headed toward Great Depression levels. Ideas that the supposedly smartest people in Washington, in both major parties, wrote off as too expensive or impractical are getting pulled into the mainstream. (“When we talk about essential people, we’re not talking about hedge-fund managers,” Sanders put it in an interview with the late-night host Stephen Colbert yesterday evening.)
The crisis has prompted the broadest embrace of New Deal–style policies since the New Deal itself, Representative Chuy Garcia of Illinois, a Sanders supporter, told me: “The rest of society is being refocused on issues that working-class people have been talking about for a long time.”
Garcia said he didn’t think that much of what was in the stimulus bill would have been possible without Sanders shifting popular opinion through his campaigns. That’s the kind of optimism Sanders’s allies are holding on to as they try to look ahead.
“It is a movement moment, because basic things are in question,” Cohen said. “Can we wrestle with some things together? Even though we’re isolated socially, we’re all experiencing the same thing. To the extent that I have any optimism, it’s that people are hungry, they want to do something.”
Maybe Sanders’s movement doesn’t need leaders. Some of his supporters maintain an idealistic sense of a movement that continues to create change from the bottom up, the way Sanders says he hopes will happen. Vermont Lieutenant Governor David Zuckerman evoked the example of Black Lives Matter, which has a dispersed leadership model. “What I think Bernie’s campaigns have done, and Bernie’s efforts beyond the campaigns have done, is helped create the network that is far stronger than being reliant on one figurehead,” Zuckerman told me.
But Sanders was able to push his ideas into the mainstream and shepherd a new generation of progressives into office because his presidential campaign was so successful. Progressives aren’t going to lead America to a different future without a leader of their own. And that’s stressing them out. The potential successors whose names get tossed around generate doubts: that Ocasio-Cortez is too young and inexperienced to be president, that Newsom is too establishment for the movement at large, that Abrams is too centrist.
Could Sanders’s movement unite without the unifying personality who almost won the Democratic nomination? Might the movement even do better without him?
Read: Progressives warn of a great deflation
“It’s going to be a hard lesson that folks need to sit in a room—or sit on Zoom, rather—and have these conversations: ‘What’s more important? My pride? Or the future of the movement?’” says Stacey Walker, a supervisor of Linn County, Iowa, and an avid Sanders supporter. Some of that, Walker says, will be on Sanders himself: “It’s his job then to help empower the existing leaders we have and to help find and recruit other leaders, but also to aid in that coalition-building.“
Quitting, Sanders said in his exit speech, “was a very difficult and painful decision.” He left Nevada after the state’s mid-February caucus in the lead for the Democratic nomination, then watched victory evaporate. He spent the past six weeks not under the delusion that he could turn the race around, but instead thinking about the future of the movement that he’d seemed on the verge of bringing into the Oval Office. Every day the microphone he had got smaller, but every day that microphone remained bigger than it had been for almost his entire political life.
“While the path may be slower now, we will change this nation and, with friends around the globe, change the entire world,” Sanders said, as he wrapped up his exit speech. In the world some Sanders supporters are imagining right now, he’s like Barry Goldwater—an ideological visionary who inspired a generation, even though his career ended back in the Senate.
As it happens, another historical model I heard some progressives looking to hopefully was the man who beat Goldwater in 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson. No one would have thought of Johnson as a big lefty from his time in the Senate, or as vice president. He was a committed Democrat catapulted into the job he’d always wanted but had basically given up on getting, and then responded to the political pressures of the moment to become one of the most progressive presidents in American history. “Everything feels so short-term right now,” the Sunrise Movement’s Stephen O’Hanlon told me, “but a year and a half ago Democrats were saying climate change wasn’t a top priority.”
Though Sanders and Biden finished yesterday expressing the same warmth to each other that was on display throughout the primary race, the now–presumptive nominee hasn’t given much indication that he’s headed leftward. And Sanders supporters are skeptical that Biden is actually committed to the few policy shifts he has made, given his sparse explanations for why he made them.
But even if Biden gets elected and governs from the bring-back-the-status-quo middle, Sanders supporters believe they’re going to win in the end anyway. One day, they note, Biden and Sanders will be retired, and frustrated Millennials could be some of the most conservative Democratic voters, rather than some of the most liberal.
“Progressives need to definitely reflect on the ways that we could have done a better job persuading voters that felt more confidence in a Biden administration and a Biden campaign than in the Sanders campaign,” says Waleed Shahid, a spokesman for the progressive group Justice Democrats—which stayed neutral in the primary until Elizabeth Warren dropped out, and then endorsed Sanders for his last gasp. But “the lessons of the Sanders campaign is that a 78-year-old white man from the whitest state in America won over a diverse coalition of much younger voters. These voters are very ideological. That constituency will continue to play a major role in Democratic Party politics in the future, and will lead it soon.”


theatlantic--2020-04-09--The Two States Where Trump’s COVID-19 Response Could Backfire in 2020

In Florida , conditions have not yet reached such a crisis point , though its caseload is growing steadily .
But because DeSantis waited so long to act , he and Trump could be punished if the outbreak ultimately imposes a heavy cost on the state .
“ If this does get worse and worse … I think DeSantis ’ s vulnerability is Trump ’ s vulnerability , ” says Adam Smith , a Tampa-based senior vice president at the bipartisan firm Mercury Public Affairs .
Read : What will happen when red states need help ?
In no other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with a governor been as intense during the outbreak as his relationships with DeSantis and Whitmer .
The two leaders , both elected in 2018 , present different profiles .
Whitmer , a former state senator , was at the vanguard of governors who moved quickly to shut down social and economic activity .
She closed educational facilities on March 16 and imposed a statewide stay-at-home order a week later .
DeSantis , a former congressman who soared from relative obscurity to win the gubernatorial nomination after Trump ’ s endorsement , closed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But he conspicuously left open the state ’ s crowded beaches through spring break , and he didn ’ t impose a statewide stay-at-home order until April 1 , after every other major state .
Trump ’ s hostility toward Whitmer—who , like other Democratic governors , has at times criticized the federal government for failures in testing and supplies—was perhaps most memorably expressed at his March 27 White House briefing .
Trump said he told Vice President Mike Pence not to “ call the woman in Michigan.
” “ You know what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ If they don ’ t treat you right , I don ’ t call.
” Trump made clear his affection for DeSantis , meanwhile , a few days later .
As DeSantis faced growing criticism at home and around the nation for his refusal to shut down Florida , Trump described him at another press briefing as a “ great governor , ” who “ knows exactly what he ’ s doing.
” When DeSantis finally issued his stay-at-home order , he made clear that he did so only after talking with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ political risks confronting Trump from his relationships with these state leaders .
In Michigan , Democrats are sure to remind voters of his threats against Whitmer .
He risks alienating those who think that a political grudge is driving the federal response .
“ There is an incredibly minuscule chance ” that the clip of Trump talking about his conversation with Pence “ does not make it into television ads , digital ads , and mailers throughout the state of Michigan later this year , ” Goldman told me .
Whitmer has tried @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Last week , she told my colleague Edward-Isaac Dovere that she ’ d had a productive call with the president , and this week she praised the federal government for sending more medical equipment .
But in her interview with Dovere , she also didn ’ t back away from her repeated criticism that an inadequate federal response had compounded the suffering in her state and elsewhere .
“ More people are going to get sick and more lives are going to be lost because we don ’ t have enough testing , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ [ personal protective equipment ] , because there aren ’ t enough ventilators , ” she said .

Voters in Michigan and Florida may be more likely than others to blame or credit him for how the outbreak unfolds.
Updated on April 13, 2020 at 5:26 p.m. ET
A handful of swing states will almost certainly decide the winner of November’s presidential election. And in two of them, Michigan and Florida, Donald Trump’s complicated relationship with their governors could expose him to greater political risk as the economic and social price of the coronavirus pandemic mounts.
Trump faces mirror-image threats. Michigan voters could interpret Trump’s animosity toward Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer as punishing the state. By contrast, in Florida, Trump’s liability could be his close relationship with Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, which is seen by many as one reason DeSantis was slow to impose a statewide stay-at-home order.
In each place, voters may be even more likely than those in other states to blame or credit the president for how the outbreak unfolds there. And in both cases, Trump’s posture toward the states is now inextricably interwoven with the larger story of their struggle to contain the disease.
Michigan is where Trump’s behavior presents the clearer danger to him come November. The president has repeatedly disparaged Whitmer and suggested that the White House should not return her calls, even as the state is buckling under the nation’s third-largest coronavirus caseload and faces medical-equipment and staffing shortages. “It is politically stupid of the president to pick a fight with a governor who is trying to manage a crisis in a state that he has to win,” Eric Goldman, Whitmer’s former campaign manager, says flatly.
In Florida, conditions have not yet reached such a crisis point, though its caseload is growing steadily. But because DeSantis waited so long to act, he and Trump could be punished if the outbreak ultimately imposes a heavy cost on the state. “If this does get worse and worse … I think DeSantis’s vulnerability is Trump’s vulnerability,” says Adam Smith, a Tampa-based senior vice president at the bipartisan firm Mercury Public Affairs.
Read: What will happen when red states need help?
In no other swing state has Trump’s relationship with a governor been as intense during the outbreak as his relationships with DeSantis and Whitmer. The two leaders, both elected in 2018, present different profiles. Whitmer, a former state senator, was at the vanguard of governors who moved quickly to shut down social and economic activity. She closed educational facilities on March 16 and imposed a statewide stay-at-home order a week later. DeSantis, a former congressman who soared from relative obscurity to win the gubernatorial nomination after Trump’s endorsement, closed educational facilities a day after Whitmer. But he conspicuously left open the state’s crowded beaches through spring break, and he didn’t impose a statewide stay-at-home order until April 1, after every other major state.
Trump’s hostility toward Whitmer—who, like other Democratic governors, has at times criticized the federal government for failures in testing and supplies—was perhaps most memorably expressed at his March 27 White House briefing. Trump said he told Vice President Mike Pence not to “call the woman in Michigan.” “You know what I say?” Trump added. “If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call.”
Trump made clear his affection for DeSantis, meanwhile, a few days later. As DeSantis faced growing criticism at home and around the nation for his refusal to shut down Florida, Trump described him at another press briefing as a “great governor,” who “knows exactly what he’s doing.” When DeSantis finally issued his stay-at-home order, he made clear that he did so only after talking with Trump.
These divergent records frame the political risks confronting Trump from his relationships with these state leaders.
In Michigan, Democrats are sure to remind voters of his threats against Whitmer. He risks alienating those who think that a political grudge is driving the federal response. “There is an incredibly minuscule chance” that the clip of Trump talking about his conversation with Pence “does not make it into television ads, digital ads, and mailers throughout the state of Michigan later this year,” Goldman told me.
Whitmer has tried to soothe her conflict with Trump. Last week, she told my colleague Edward-Isaac Dovere that she’d had a productive call with the president, and this week she praised the federal government for sending more medical equipment. But in her interview with Dovere, she also didn’t back away from her repeated criticism that an inadequate federal response had compounded the suffering in her state and elsewhere. “More people are going to get sick and more lives are going to be lost because we don’t have enough testing, because we don’t have enough [personal protective equipment], because there aren’t enough ventilators,” she said.
Read: Gretchen Whitmer: “There’s going to be a terrible cost”
John Truscott, a veteran Republican consultant in Michigan, told me that, right now, most voters probably see Whitmer as standing up for her state, not seeking to score political points. But Truscott believes that the conflict is doing more to harden partisan divisions in Michigan than to scramble them. Trump’s attacks on Whitmer are “one of those things where people thought it was unnecessary and kind of gratuitous,” he said. “But at the same time, people who like Trump weren’t bothered by it. People who don’t like him hate him even more.”
If the reaction has been relatively muted so far, Truscott believes that it’s because the outbreak is still seen primarily as a problem for greater Detroit. It hasn’t yet penetrated as deeply into the small-town and rural parts of the state that constitute the Trump heartland.
But that doesn’t mean it won’t—or that Detroiters’ outrage doesn’t affect Trump. He won Michigan in 2016 by only 10,704 votes—a smaller margin than in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the two other bricks that he dislodged from the Democrats’ “blue wall.” The president can hardly afford any erosion in the populous Detroit metropolitan area.
Two suburban counties outside the city illustrate his problem. Four years ago, he won Macomb County, the fabled seedbed of blue-collar “Reagan Democrats,” by 12 percentage points, and he lost white-collar Oakland County by about eight points. In 2018, Whitmer narrowly won Macomb and roughly doubled Hillary Clinton’s margin in Oakland. Just before the outbreak crested last month, turnout in both places soared in the 2020 Democratic primary compared with 2016, a sign of rising engagement among Democrats.
Now both counties are facing fierce conditions, with more than 6,600 cases and 375 deaths combined as of yesterday morning. (Wayne County, which includes Detroit, has more than 9,600 cases and almost 450 deaths, one of the nation’s heaviest concentrations.) Detroit newspapers this week have been filled with wrenching stories about hundreds of local health-care workers, particularly nurses, who’ve tested positive for the disease.
The only recent public polling in Michigan came in mid-March, before Trump’s public attacks on Whitmer and the health-care crisis’s surge in the state. Even at that point, the share of residents who approved of Whitmer’s response to the outbreak (about 70 percent) dwarfed the portion that approved of Trump (about 50 percent), according to the Great Lakes Poll, which is conducted across several Midwest states by Baldwin Wallace University. The survey also found that Trump trailed former Vice President Joe Biden in a general-election matchup in Michigan by five percentage points.
Bernie Porn, the president of the Lansing-based nonpartisan polling firm EPIC-MRA, told me that before the outbreak, Trump “was already vulnerable in Michigan.” But his confrontations with Whitmer could seal his fate.
“I don’t understand what he is thinking about,” Porn said. “She has done a fantastic job during this health crisis. She’s been very decisive. And she made decisions about closing things down and taking actions” before the state hit a spike. By attacking Whitmer while she copes with these enormous challenges, Porn said, Trump has created a situation where “the ads write themselves” for Democrats in the state.
As ever, the politics on the ground in Florida are more complex. The state has been extraordinarily close in recent presidential and gubernatorial elections. Trump won it by just more than one percentage point in 2016, four years after Barack Obama won it by just less than one point. But after Republicans took the governorship and a Senate seat in 2018, many Democrats grew even more pessimistic that they could recapture the state from Trump this year, given his strong hold on older, rural, and blue-collar voters.*
“The general perception among people who obsess about this was, Trump was sitting prettier in Florida than in a lot of the other swing states,” says Adam Smith, who was for many years one of the state’s most prominent political reporters at the Tampa Bay Times.
The question in Florida is whether the coronavirus outbreak will jolt the state hard enough to rattle that consensus. As of last night, Florida ranks eighth among the states in total number of cases. Over half of those have been recorded in the three big Democratic-leaning counties in the southeast: Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach. The statewide death toll remains relatively low, at about 300, or approximately one for every 100,000 people.
The outbreak’s concentration in the bluest parts of the state has created a dynamic similar to the one in Michigan: The Republican heartland (in northern and Central Florida, as well as parts of the Gulf Coast) may feel more threatened now by the economic risks of the disease than by the health dangers. “You have to remember, this is largely a South Florida thing,” says Ryan Tyson, a Republican pollster who conducts surveys for the state’s business community. Even Democratic strategists privately acknowledged to me that many Florida voters may be sympathetic to DeSantis’s decision to delay action, given how important tourism is to the state’s economy.
Read: Big cities won’t snap back to normal
Tyson says that in his ongoing polls, both Trump and DeSantis are maintaining approval ratings well over 50 percent in the state, about the same as two weeks ago and higher than one month ago. But the most recent public poll, from the University of North Florida, found the two in a much more tenuous position. Only 45 percent of respondents approved of Trump’s handling of the outbreak, and 51 percent gave DeSantis positive marks. That’s significantly below the number for governors in most other states.
The UNF poll, which was conducted from March 31 through April 4, found Biden leading Trump by six percentage points in the state. But longtime Florida political observers I spoke with believe that Democrats still face an extremely difficult puzzle in Florida. The Democratic ticket needs to excite turnout among African American and non-Cuban Latino voters, while still reassuring enough older white voters to avoid catastrophic losses among that huge bloc in the state.
“These are tough trade-offs for Democrats,” says Daniel A. Smith, a University of Florida political scientist. “To find someone who can calm the nerves of the older white electorate that votes and mobilize younger voters and people of color—it’s a high bar.”
But to Smith, as with other analysts in the state, the coronavirus outbreak remains a wild card. DeSantis deviated so conspicuously from the approach of virtually every other big-state governor. (Ironically, until this crisis, most political observers in Florida felt like DeSantis had been edging away from Trump and looking to broaden his appeal.) Whether DeSantis faces a backlash for delaying a shutdown will likely depend on how hard the disease ultimately hits the state. Another potential vulnerability is that Florida’s unemployment system, which was redesigned under DeSantis’s Republican predecessor, has staggered under the increased demand from disease-related layoffs.
But what is clear even now is that many in the state see Trump’s fingerprints on the governor’s decisions. That means the president is unlikely to escape unscathed if Floridians ultimately conclude that the governor made the wrong choice in waiting to act until only a handful of governors in the most conservative states, such as Alabama and Wyoming, had refused to do so.
“This is a pivotal moment right now, and we continue to not see leadership coming out of Tallahassee on this issue, certainly relative to almost every other state,” Smith said. “We are akin to what’s going on in Alabama. Is that what we expect from our leadership in this state?”
The answer to that question may determine whether Democrats can fight back into contention in a key swing state that before the crisis had seemed to be drifting beyond their grasp. And Florida could be even more consequential to the president’s reelection hopes if he’s already doomed his chances in Michigan.


theatlantic--2020-04-09--<em>The Atlantic </em>Politics Daily: Two Key Swing States During a Pandemic

On the opposite end of the spectrum : The Trump administration ’ s fingerprints are all over Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ’ s playbook .
DeSantis initially dragged his feet over shutting down Florida ( all the while , Trump described him as a “ great governor ” who “ knows exactly what he ’ s doing ” ) .
In Florida , conditions have not yet reached such a crisis point , though its caseload is growing steadily .
But because DeSantis waited so long to act , he and Trump could be punished if the outbreak ultimately imposes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The departure of Bernie Sanders from the 2020 presidential primary leaves Joe Biden the presumptive nominee .
The greatest accomplishment of the Sanders campaign has less to do with moving good ideas out of the “ radical ” category and into the mainstream , the writer John Nichols argues—and more to do with inspiring the people who will carry those ideas forward .
In a way , Bernie Sanders has won .
+ The left ’ s theory of politics fell apart in this cycle ’ s Democratic primary , but its policy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ real merit , Adam Serwer argued in March , and the centrist wing of the party should not dismiss it .
+ Launching a column on happiness during a pandemic seems awkward , but that ’ s what we ’ re doing today : Here ’ s the first installment of our new weekly column on how to live a life that feels whole and meaningful , from Arthur C. Brooks .
+ America ’ s obsession with keeping aid from the undeserving is making a bad economic crisis worse , Mehrsa Baradaran @ @ @ @ @ @ @ won ’ t .
+ If there is a way to stop COVID-19 , it will be by blocking its proteins from hijacking , suppressing , and evading humans ’ cellular machinery .
These are the best hopes for a coronavirus drug , our science writer Sarah Zhang reports .
You can keep up with The Atlantic ’ s most crucial coronavirus coverage here .
Today ’ s newsletter was written by Kaila Philo , a Politics fellow .
It was edited by Shan Wang , who oversees newsletters .
You can reply @ @ @ @ @ @ @ comments , or send a note to politicsdaily @ theatlantic.com .
Your support makes our journalism possible .
Subscribe here .

President Trump’s complicated relationships with the governors of two swing states could ultimately cost him reelection. Plus: How the legacy of Bernie Sanders might live on.
It’s Thursday, April 9. In today’s newsletter: There’s something about Michigan and Florida. Plus: How the legacy of Bernie Sanders might live on.
*
« TODAY IN POLITICS »
(KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI / AFP / GETTY )
Two COVID-19 Swing-State Case Studies
President Trump’s complicated relationships with the governors of two swing states could ultimately cost him reelection, my colleague Ron Brownstein writes.
First, Michigan: The president said at a White House press briefing in March he told Vice President Mike Pence not to “call the woman in Michigan”—Governor Gretchen Whitmer—if she didn’t “treat [him] right.” While he won Michigan in 2016 by a slim 0.23 percent margin, that sort of hostility could hurt his chances of doing so again.
The president can hardly afford any erosion in the populous Detroit metropolitan area …. “It is politically stupid of the president to pick a fight with a governor who is trying to manage a crisis in a state that he has to win,” one political strategist told Ron.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer is hardly the only Democrat to face the president’s ire. The president has expressed displeasure toward Democratic leadership across the country for what he regards as insufficient gratitude to the administration’s response efforts, my colleague Peter Nicholas has reported. But what happens when the COVID-19 outbreak peaks in red states?
On the opposite end of the spectrum: The Trump administration’s fingerprints are all over Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s playbook. DeSantis initially dragged his feet over shutting down Florida (all the while, Trump described him as a “great governor” who “knows exactly what he’s doing”).
In Florida, conditions have not yet reached such a crisis point, though its caseload is growing steadily. But because DeSantis waited so long to act, he and Trump could be punished if the outbreak ultimately imposes a heavy cost on the state.
Read Ron’s full analysis.
—Kaila Philo
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« ARGUMENT OF THE DAY »
(CHANG W. LEE / THE NEW YORK TIMES / REDUX)
The departure of Bernie Sanders from the 2020 presidential primary leaves Joe Biden the presumptive nominee. The greatest accomplishment of the Sanders campaign has less to do with moving good ideas out of the “radical” category and into the mainstream, the writer John Nichols argues—and more to do with inspiring the people who will carry those ideas forward. In a way, Bernie Sanders has won.
+ The left’s theory of politics fell apart in this cycle’s Democratic primary, but its policy critique of the Barack Obama era has real merit, Adam Serwer argued in March, and the centrist wing of the party should not dismiss it.
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« THE CORONAVIRUS READER »
(JAN BUCHCZIK)
+ Launching a column on happiness during a pandemic seems awkward, but that’s what we’re doing today: Here’s the first installment of our new weekly column on how to live a life that feels whole and meaningful, from Arthur C. Brooks.
+ America’s obsession with keeping aid from the undeserving is making a bad economic crisis worse, Mehrsa Baradaran argues. It should just send checks—yet won’t.
+ If there is a way to stop COVID-19, it will be by blocking its proteins from hijacking, suppressing, and evading humans’ cellular machinery. These are the best hopes for a coronavirus drug, our science writer Sarah Zhang reports.
You can keep up with The Atlantic’s most crucial coronavirus coverage here.
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theatlantic--2020-04-08--We Can’t Rely on Just the Military

We Can’t Rely on Just the Military

Read : The case against waging ‘ war ’ on the coronavirus Aircraft carriers , of course , are the hulking epitome of American military might ; “ Whenever there has been a crisis , the first question has been : ‘ Where are the carriers ?
’ ” the Navy ’ s website proudly proclaims .
The answer , during the current crisis , is that the Theodore Roosevelt is out of service in Guam , with a demoralized crew and more than 150 sailors ( including , reportedly , the discharged captain ) sick with COVID-19 .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ here .
Aircraft carriers can ’ t fend off disease ; in fact , they ’ re uniquely vulnerable to it .
As my colleague Kathy Gilsinan wrote , the military is struggling to protect its own people , let alone other Americans .
The Theodore Roosevelt cost $ 4.5 billion .
And as Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut pointed out this week , whatever fancy aircraft carrier replaces it “ will be more than our entire annual anti-pandemic budget.
” ( After all , it costs $ 400,000 just to fix clogged @ @ @ @ @ @ @ aircraft carriers . )
“ It ’ s not that we lack the resources to protect America from pandemic disease .
It ’ s just that we don ’ t align our spending to the actual threats that America faces today , ” Murphy wrote on Twitter .
“ Russia and China are bigger threats than ever before .
We shouldn ’ t stand down in the fight against major powers and non-state adversaries .
But are conventional military actors really 100x more dangerous than disease ?
The answer , of course , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Presuming that national security is about securing the nation , it follows that national-security resources should be allocated according to what will most protect the American people .
Just last week , on the same day that the United States exceeded 1,000 coronavirus deaths in a single day for the first time , the head of the U.S. military ’ s Indo-Pacific Command requested $ 20 billion in new funding over the next six years to counter China in the Pacific .
The price tag includes advanced weaponry such as space-based radars @ @ @ @ @ @ @ system “ critical for defending the Homeland.
” With that kind of cash , the United States could buy a whole lot of ventilators , which are in dangerously short supply at the moment .
That ’ s not to say that the U.S. must choose between space-based radars and ventilators , between guarding against the very real threat China poses to U.S. interests and girding for public-health catastrophes .
But it is to say that the United States has a lot of money to play with , and can afford to allocate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reflect the threats facing Americans around the world .
Imagine if the U.S. government had been as proactive about stockpiling medical equipment for a pandemic as it has been about , say , competing with China .
Kenny said he hopes that the Defense Department will draw on its logistical expertise to help distribute medical supplies , and that the military ’ s medical researchers will help develop a coronavirus vaccine and COVID-19 treatments .
Still , he continued , “ maybe it is time to make sure U.S. support to the World @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than the costs of buying and operating a single F-35 fighter.
” Maybe .
But the government isn ’ t quite there yet .
Yesterday , Trump threatened to withhold U.S. funding from the WHO .
The U.S. military , meanwhile , just placed an order for 78 new F-35s , at a cost of $ 4.7 billion .

It might seem like the Pentagon can act as some sort of savior in confronting the coronavirus, but that’s unlikely.
In September 2014, as the deadly Ebola virus overwhelmed West Africa, the Obama administration felt compelled to intervene. The Pentagon spent $360 million to send 3,000 troops to the region and tasked them with building 17 100-bed treatment centers. Ultimately, only 11 centers were constructed, and only 28 Ebola patients were treated at them. Nine of those centers never even saw patients. By contrast, the international medical NGO Doctors Without Borders treated more than 5,000 Ebola patients, or a third of total confirmed cases, at a cost of roughly $100 million, or less than a third of what the Pentagon spent.
The difference was that the Obama administration’s efforts didn’t kick in until after the outbreak had already peaked. The first center opened in mid-November, by which point new cases were steadily declining. Doctors Without Borders, meanwhile, first responded to the crisis in March 2014.
The armed forces have certainly had their share of public-health successes, from Walter Reed’s discoveries about yellow fever to the military’s work on an Ebola vaccine. But the sluggish and costly response to the Ebola outbreak, according to Charles Kenny of the Center for Global Development, is a reality check as the Pentagon struggles to respond to the coronavirus outbreak. As an institution designed to defeat “opponents on the battlefield,” he told me, the Defense Department is “a woefully insufficient, inefficient, and expensive tool” to combat a pandemic. What are needed most right now are scientists and medical workers collaborating across countries.
Read: We were warned
“COVID-19 is demonstrating the challenges of using a war-fighting machine for pandemic response once again,” added Kenny, the author of a new book on why the Pentagon is ill-equipped to confront 21st-century challenges such as global disease outbreaks and climate change.
Judging by how the military has been deployed so far, it would seem to be taking a leading role in the nation's response to the coronavirus. The Navy has dispatched hospital ships to New York and Los Angeles. The National Guard has scrambled to set up field hospitals across the country. The Defense Department has released millions of N95 masks and thousands of ventilators from its strategic reserves. Lawmakers and op-ed writers are calling for military officials to assume command of the emergency response.
Yet all this has created a misleading impression: that the U.S. military—the finest fighting force in the world, blessed with a bigger budget than the combined defense budget of the next 12 countries in terms of military expenditures—can act as some sort of savior. That’s unlikely, because responding to a pandemic is not what the military was built to do. What this crisis has revealed isn’t that the American armed forces need to get better at combatting pandemics. It’s that the American response to the virus has been crippled by the fact that its spending priorities are all out of whack.
Donald Trump says he’s at “war” with the virus, but “war is, in part, what got us to this health crisis—with weakened public health care and a manufacturing system better suited to building bombers than respirators,” the scholars Catherine Lutz and Neta Crawford, who direct a project tracking the trillions of dollars the United States has spent on counterterrorism campaigns, wrote recently. “The years of investing in military solutions means that this is where the resources, physical and cultural, are. The problem is that most of them are irrelevant to what we need to treat the sick and organize public response.” COVID-19 has already killed more than four times the number of Americans who died on 9/11.
The predicament the U.S. finds itself in is akin to that of someone who buys plenty of pricey body armor and weaponry and boldly sets out for battle, only to fall into a dark hole. Suddenly, the armor and weapons are of no use. What he really needs is a sturdy ladder and a flashlight.
As Ashik Siddique, a military-spending researcher, pointed out to me, in 2019 the U.S. government allocated about $750 billion for national defense and about $8 billion for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “That’s almost 100 times as much preparing for war as preparing for pandemics and disease outbreaks,” said Siddique, who works with the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank.
Those lopsided investments are now painfully evident. Siddique noted that Trump took until the end of March to begin (gingerly) using the Korean War–era Defense Production Act to force companies to produce and distribute essential medical supplies for addressing COVID-19.
The Defense Department “is now prioritizing the manufacture of ventilators and personal protective equipment,” but these could still take weeks to reach “medical professionals, because of delays in coordination between the Pentagon and federal agencies … about which equipment should be manufactured,” Siddique said. At that point, the pandemic may have already peaked in many places.
DOD “hands out over $364 billion a year in private contracts, about half its entire budget, and claims a workforce of 140,000 acquisition professionals that could have been put to work much sooner on steering many more of these contracts with defense firms to produce necessary medical supplies,” he continued. “If the Defense Production Act had been invoked back in February, large-scale industrial production of ventilators and masks would have begun with weeks to spare.”
Similarly, the Navy’s hospital ships in New York and Los Angeles, which each have hundreds of hospital beds and health-care workers on board, initially treated only a handful of non-coronavirus patients, in a modest effort to relieve civilian medical facilities that are buckling under the weight of COVID-19 cases. That’s because, as a recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies noted, the “vessels are designed for treating trauma cases associated with combat” and “are poorly designed for containing infectious diseases.” Nevertheless, the USNS Comfort in New York has now agreed to take on COVID-19 patients out of sheer necessity.
The military’s initial policy of not accepting COVID-19 cases “may make sense if the Navy’s goal is to ensure it has capacity to respond to military threats,” Kenny said. But that “doesn’t make too much sense if your goal is to help out in a city undergoing a pandemic.”
Military officials and many politicians, moreover, are insisting on casting the campaign against the coronavirus as a war, even though it’s a different beast entirely. Earlier this week, in defending his decision to dismiss the captain of the USS Theodore Roosevelt for warning in a leaked letter of the spread of the virus on the aircraft carrier, then–Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly declared to the crew: “If this ship was in combat and there were hypersonic missiles coming at it, you’d be pretty fucking scared too. But you do your jobs.” (While we’re on the topic, the Trump administration’s 2021 budget proposal, released as the coronavirus spread around the world, called for investing hundreds of millions of dollars in hypersonic missiles while slashing CDC funding by a similar amount.)
Read: The case against waging ‘war’ on the coronavirus
Aircraft carriers, of course, are the hulking epitome of American military might; “Whenever there has been a crisis, the first question has been: ‘Where are the carriers?’” the Navy’s website proudly proclaims. The answer, during the current crisis, is that the Theodore Roosevelt is out of service in Guam, with a demoralized crew and more than 150 sailors (including, reportedly, the discharged captain) sick with COVID-19. The rules of war don’t apply here. Aircraft carriers can’t fend off disease; in fact, they’re uniquely vulnerable to it. As my colleague Kathy Gilsinan wrote, the military is struggling to protect its own people, let alone other Americans.
The Theodore Roosevelt cost $4.5 billion. And as Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut pointed out this week, whatever fancy aircraft carrier replaces it “will be more than our entire annual anti-pandemic budget.” (After all, it costs $400,000 just to fix clogged toilets on the country’s newest aircraft carriers.)
“It’s not that we lack the resources to protect America from pandemic disease. It’s just that we don’t align our spending to the actual threats that America faces today,” Murphy wrote on Twitter. “Russia and China are bigger threats than ever before. We shouldn’t stand down in the fight against major powers and non-state adversaries. But are conventional military actors really 100x more dangerous than disease? The answer, of course, is staring us in the face today.” Presuming that national security is about securing the nation, it follows that national-security resources should be allocated according to what will most protect the American people.
Just last week, on the same day that the United States exceeded 1,000 coronavirus deaths in a single day for the first time, the head of the U.S. military’s Indo-Pacific Command requested $20 billion in new funding over the next six years to counter China in the Pacific. The price tag includes advanced weaponry such as space-based radars and a “360 degree” missile-defense system “critical for defending the Homeland.” With that kind of cash, the United States could buy a whole lot of ventilators, which are in dangerously short supply at the moment.
That’s not to say that the U.S. must choose between space-based radars and ventilators, between guarding against the very real threat China poses to U.S. interests and girding for public-health catastrophes. But it is to say that the United States has a lot of money to play with, and can afford to allocate its resources in ways that more accurately reflect the threats facing Americans around the world. Imagine if the U.S. government had been as proactive about stockpiling medical equipment for a pandemic as it has been about, say, competing with China.
Kenny said he hopes that the Defense Department will draw on its logistical expertise to help distribute medical supplies, and that the military’s medical researchers will help develop a coronavirus vaccine and COVID-19 treatments. Still, he continued, “maybe it is time to make sure U.S. support to the World Health Organization is worth more each year than the costs of buying and operating a single F-35 fighter.”
Maybe. But the government isn’t quite there yet. Yesterday, Trump threatened to withhold U.S. funding from the WHO. The U.S. military, meanwhile, just placed an order for 78 new F-35s, at a cost of $4.7 billion.