‘This Refusal to Lead Has a Body Count’: Jake Tapper Calls Out Trump’s Ongoing Disinterest in Pandemic Threat
CNN’s Jake Tapper offered a four-month review of President Donald Trump’s performance in responding to the coronavirus pandemic, and delivered a scathing indictment of the White House’s lack of leadership as the national death tool surpassed 140,000.
On the day Trump announced that he was resurrection the daily coronavirus task force briefings — that he all but stopped after he recklessly implied public health officials should investigate injecting disinfectant into Covid-19 patients — Tapper jumped back 120, 90, 60, and 30 days on the calendar to remind viewers of Trump’s dismissive and outright false statements about the outbreak.
“We have already seen months of examples of what the president does at these briefings,” Tapper noted. “He often downplays the threat of the virus. He frequently lies about what is really happening. Here’s the president four months ago today at one of these briefings. March 20th when more than 200 Americans had already died.”
Tapper then showed a clip of Trump saying testing “was going very well” when public health officials across the country were begging for more testing support.
“That’s right,” Tapper said. “Four months ago the president said testing was going very well. It was not, and labs continue to lag in being able to test people who need tests, who want tests and to turn around quick results,” Tapper pointed out. “Now, three months ago to this day on April 20th, with more than 40,000 Americans dead, President Trump continued to try to paint a rosy picture of this tragedy saying that the administration had tremendous testing capability.”
The CNN anchor played the next Trump clip:
“This capacity is sufficient to allow states to conduct diagnostic testing to treat patients as well as contact tracing to contain outbreaks.
Tapper:
“Contain what outbreaks? What outbreaks are being contained? Which ones? It was not sufficient then. And health experts say it is not sufficient today,” Tapper noted. “In some parts of the country, any serious contact tracing campaign is nonexistent. Just minutes ago, President Trump tweeted this image saying, quote, ‘Many people say that it is patriotic to wear a face mask when you can’t socially distance. There is nobody more patriotic than me, your favorite president.’
“This image comes after months of President Trump only mocking people who wear masks and refusing to set an example by wearing one publicly. Two months ago today, on May 20th, the death toll had surpassed 92,000. And Michigan’s attorney general was publicly pleading for President Trump to wear a mask when he visited a Ford factory. And the next day the president visited that Ford factory and did not wear the mask for the public portion of the tour. He said he didn’t want to, quote, ‘Give press the pleasure of seeing him wearing a mask.'”
“The horrible example that the president set may have actually peaked one month ago today, June 20th, with nearly 120,000 Americans dead, President Trump held an indoor rally,” Tapper noted, before revisiting Trump’s infamous “slow down the testing” claim while speaking to a partially-empty arena in Tulsa.
“The virus is spreading because the virus is spreading. It’s not spreading because of the testing,” Tapper added, debunking Trump’s false claim. “And that brings us all to today. With nearly 141,000 Americans dead from coronavirus, and the Trump administration’s testings czar Admiral Brett Giroir admitting that testing is still not where it needs to be with long wait times continuing across the country. Yet, there is still no new presidential strategy to get us out of this spiraling crisis. This refusal to lead has a body count.”
Watch the video above, via CNN.
