Trump Reportedly Considered Quarantining Covid-Stricken Americans in Guantanamo Bay: ‘We Are Not Going to Import a Virus’
A new book says that former President Donald Trump considered sending Americans infected with the coronavirus to Guantanamo Bay to keep U.S. Covid numbers down.
Washington Post reporters Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta have previewed an excerpt of their upcoming book: Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History. The book includes details from roughly 180 interviews the authors conducted with Trump administration health leaders and White House senior staff, many of which illustrate Trump’s flailing efforts to respond to the pandemic.
The previewed portion of the book addresses efforts within the former administration to “prevent Trump from acting on his worst instincts” during the crisis. One reported example of this was when Trump repeatedly suggested quarantining Americans abroad in Guantanamo.
From the Post:
In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, as White House officials debated whether to bring infected Americans home for care, President Donald Trump suggested his own plan for where to send them, eager to suppress the numbers on U.S. soil.
“Don’t we have an island that we own?” the president reportedly asked those assembled in the Situation Room in February 2020, before the U.S. outbreak would explode. “What about Guantánamo?”
“We import goods,” Trump specified, lecturing his staff. “We are not going to import a virus.”
Trump’s desire to suppress America’s Covid numbers harkens back to an instance early in the pandemic when he spoke against allowing 3,500 passengers from the Grand Princess cruise ship to disembark in Oakland. The ship was experiencing a coronavirus outbreak at the time, and Trump said he wanted passengers to stay on the boat so it wouldn’t increase the U.S. case number total.
The preview goes on with further anecdotes including an explosive phone call where Trump screamed at former Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar that “I’m going to lose the election because of testing! What idiot had the federal government do testing?” The book contains other moments of Trump administration infighting with the former president and other officials while the pandemic continued to unfold.
