Poor, Distractible Donald: Impeachment, Pandemic and Hoaxes
Senator Mitch McConnell, among others, claims that the reason the COVID-19 epidemic in the United States is so serious, and the response to it so inadequate, is because the impeachment of Donald Trump was such a distraction that the government was unable to do any better. Therefore, it isn’t because the Trump Administration is incompetent, or Donald Trump himself is incompetent, or that the entire Republican Party is incompetent; it is because the Democrats were so partisan and unpatriotic that they chose to launch an impeachment investigation of Trump’s attempts to extort political favors from Ukraine. Is there any truth to this?
First, let’s set the timelines out so we can compare them. This is a summary of three separate timelines: one on the impeachment inquiry, one on the COVID-19 pandemic and the last more specifically on Trump’s comments regarding the pandemic. Other information has been included as indicated.
2014: Hunter Biden begins working at Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company.[1]
2016: Victor Shokin, the Ukrainian top prosecutor, is removed for corruption, due to pressure from then Vice President Joe Biden, as well as the European Union and even some Republican senators. Although he later claims it was because he was investigating Burisma, in fact there were no anti-corruption investigations of Burisma until after Shokin was replaced. This is in fact one of the reasons for his removal.
January 13, 2017: A week before taking office, Donald Trump’s incoming administration was briefed on the dangers of a possible global pandemic, including both the fact that it could be even worse than the flu of 1918 and that it was a matter of “when” more than “if.” According to Politico and others, the future presidential advisors and Cabinet members seemed “uninterested.”[2]
May 2018: President Trump disbands NSC committee planning for a future pandemic.
August 2018: President Donald Trump approves military aid to Ukraine, accepting the reports of his administration’s intelligence agencies, diplomatic corps and economic advisors that Ukraine was working to crack down on the corruption that had long been a problem there.
April 2019: Alex Azar, HHS Secretary, together with Tim Morrison, special assistant to the President, warned about the possibility of a pandemic. Azar said the danger of pandemic is what keeps them awake at night.
May 9, 2019: Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s personal attorney with no official government status, announces that he’ll be investigating Hunter Biden and his role at Burisma.
May 16, 2019: Ukraine’s Prosector General announces that an ongoing investigation has found no evidence of corruption concerning Hunter Biden and Burisma.
July 25, 2019: Despite having already been assured by officials in the Ukrainian government that Hunter Biden was not involved in any corruption, President Trump tells President Zelenskiy of Ukraine that he wants “a favor:” that Ukraine should publicly announce an investigation of Hunter Biden for corruption, an investigation that will also implicate Trump’s political rival Joe Biden.
July-August 2019: Trump Administration pressures Ukraine to publicly announce an investigation of Hunter Biden, despite Ukraine’s previous investigation finding no corruption. The White House and Republicans in Congress are later shown to have been involved in this pressure campaign, which included threats to hold up all aid to Ukraine including defense aid essential for its national survival.
through September 2019: Trump and his administration alternatively admit and deny that they threatened to hold up aid to Ukraine in order to pressure Zelenskiy into investigating Hunter Biden. Leaks of whistleblower complaints, etc. reveal more details, some of which Trump initially denies.
September: House launches impeachment investigation.
September-December 2019: Witnesses testimony, from top U.S. diplomats, foreign policy advisors, intelligence officers and military advisers, contradicts Trump claims, detailing his pressure campaign against Ukraine and affirming that he was not interested in the results of the investigation or whether it showed any actual investigation; Trump only cared that the investigation be announced so that the Biden name would be tarnished. Trump and his aides refused to comply with Congressional subpoenas, not due to “executive privilege” but simply because they said the Executive branch outranks the Legislative branch. This led Congress to consider a new possible article of impeachment: obstruction of Congress. In December the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives approves two articles of impeachment: “obstruction of Congress” and “abuse of power.”
Late November-early January: U.S. Intelligence becomes aware of spreading virus in China, holds extensive briefings throughout intelligence and military agencies, culminating in a detailed briefing for Trump in early January.[3]
December 31, 2019: First case of what will later be called COVID-19 reported to World Health Organization in Wuhan, China[4]
January 18, 2020: Trump’s advisors, including HHS Secretary Alex Azar, attempt to convince him that the epidemic in China is serious and the Chinese government is covering it up. He is uninterested, even interrupting the briefing to ask when he can lift the ban on fruit-flavored vaping products. For the rest of January, his staff and advisors attempted to convince Trump that COVID-19 was a serious threat to the nation and to his reelection, but he refused to believe them. Instead, he accepted reassurances from the Chinese government, following a pattern of rejecting the advice of his own intelligence agencies and advisors and accepting the word of foreign dictators.[5]
January 22, 2020: Reporter asks Trump if there are any worries about coronavirus, and he replies, “No. Not at all. And we have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s — going to be just fine.”
January 24: Trump tweets, “China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”
Jan. 28: At a mass rally, Trump refers to the coronavirus as “the Democrats new hoax.” He does not appear to be denying that it exists, but is denying that it is a real danger.[6] This causes a lot of confusion among the press, and even more among less trained listeners.
Jan. 30: Trump blocks travel from China.
The same night, he holds a campaign rally in Iowa.
“We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment — five. … we think it’s going to have a very good ending for it.”
Feb. 2: Trump tells Fox News host Sean Hannity, “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”
Feb. 6, 2020: Earliest known death in U.S. from COVID-19, in Santa Clara County in California. This indicates that the disease was already established and uncontained in the U.S. before Trump’s travel ban was put in place, as all containment efforts at that time were focused on Washington State.[7]
January-February 2020: After negotiations between House and Senate, the House holds final vote approving articles of impeachment and sends them to Senate. Senate holds impeachment trial and Feb. 2 shows that majority of Americans, including some Republican senators, agree Mr. Trump abused the power of his office for personal political gain. Popular opinion is closely divided on whether or not he should be removed from office, but there is widespread agreement that the House investigation has proven its claims. Trump’s defense, by his attorney Alan Dershowitz, is that his reelection is in the national interest and that therefore anything he does for his own personal political gain is also a matter of national security and therefore legal.
Feb. 4, 2020: During the State of the Union Address, Trump awards the Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbaugh, a highly influential Republican pundit and Trump supporter.
Feb. 5, 2020: Trump acquitted by US Senate in a party-line vote, with the exception of Sen. Romney of Utah who votes with the Democrats to remove Trump from office.
NOTE: After this point, the impeachment is officially over and there is no realistic chance of it being revived.
February 24, 2020: Rush Limbaugh tells his listeners that the coronavirus is “the common cold.”[8]
February 27, 2020: Sean Hannity, a prominent FOX News and talk radio pundit with whom Trump is said to talk by phone nearly every night, attributes concern over coronavirus to “the media mob and the Democratic extreme radical socialist party.”
February 27: Trump supporter Candace Owens mocks concern about coronavirus, calling it “liberal paranoia.”[9]
February-March, 2020: Limbaugh continues his attacks on the medical community and health experts, insisting that COVID-19 is nothing more than the common cold. Sean Hannity continues to denounce concern over the pandemic as “hysteria” and “hoax.”[10]
March 6, 2020: While touring CDC, Trump compares the coronavirus tests to the transcript of his July 25, 2019 phone call that led to his impeachment, saying, “The tests are all perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good.”[11] This was after numerous reports that the initial CDC tests were defective and that there was a severe shortage.
March 9, 2020: Trish Regan of FOX Business News denounces coronavirus concerns as a “coronavirus impeachment scam”[12] On his show, Hannity again refers to coronavirus as a “hoax.”
Jan-March 2020: Trump repeats many of these talking points from the conservative media in his briefings, speeches etc.
March 13, 2020: Trish Regan put on hiatus and later permanently dismissed.
March 16, 2020: Trump admits that virus is indeed “very bad” and begins to urge Americans to avoid crowds and so on.
March 18, 2020: Hannity claims that his show had always taken coronavirus seriously and never considered it a “hoax.”
March 24, 2020: Trump says that governors fighting coronavirus have to “be nice” if they want federal help.[13]
March-April 23, 2020: Trump conducts daily briefings on coronavirus; he also uses these briefings to attack political rivals and to make jokes about the “deep state”[14] and having sex with models.[15] Frequently he is contradicted by his own aids and health experts, either during the briefing or afterwards, as he is presenting misinformation, medically dubious cures and so on.
April 23, 2020: During his daily press briefing, Trump interrupts the presentation of medical information about how UV light and disinfectants can kill the coronavirus to tell his doctors to look into whether it would be possible to use either to kill the virus inside an infected person. The White House spends the next 24 hours trying to respond to mockery of this idea, medical experts explain that both the light and the disinfectant that would kill the virus would also kill people, disinfectant manufacturers issue statements warning people not to drink bleach or Lysol or similar products, and the press describes the president as too “distracted” by politics and media coverage to pay attention to the actual information discussed at the regular White House pandemic response meetings.[16]
So yes, the impeachment was a distraction. Trump was so distracted by impeachment that while the impeachment itself was over by Feb. 5, he is still talking about it. His supporters, in government and in the conservative media, were so distracted by the impeachment that they dismissed talk about the pandemic until mid-March, 2020, when Trump, Hannity and others announced that they had in fact always taken the pandemic seriously although their public statements regularly used words like “hysteria,” “hoax” and “conspiracy.” Had the Republican Party and Trump administration begun paying attention to the coronavirus epidemic in February 2020, when the impeachment was over, we could have saved many more American lives.[17] Instead, they were still distracted by the impeachment, which was over by February 5 and was as good as dead as soon as it reached the Republican-controlled Senate which had made clear before hearing any evidence that they would refuse to remove Trump no matter what. Donald Trump is still distracted by the impeachment, even taking time in April 2020 to punish the Inspector General whose legally-required report to Congress of the whistleblower’s complaint started the impeachment investigation. So yes, as Mitch McConnell says, Donald Trump, as well as the entire Republican Party, the leading personalities at FOX News and other conservative media were all so distracted by the impeachment that even more than a month after it was over they could not seriously talk publicly about the growing pandemic except to call it a second attempt to impeach their President.
But at the same time, from the beginning of his administration, even before he took office, Trump and his team were distracted from the dangers of a possible pandemic, even after they were explicitly warned. Some within the administration saw the dangers and attempted to warn Trump about it, but he was only concerned with political matters like the trumped-up investigation of the Bidens. The nation wasted over two months, dithering instead of preparing supplies and plans: the last month of the impeachment process and then six weeks after impeachment was over, during which the Republican party did nothing.[18] It remained a distraction because Trump and his administration put his own political ambitions ahead of the national security of the nation, obsessing with Ukraine and the efforts to concoct evidence against a political rival rather than with the warnings of their own intelligence and health agencies about a looming national threat. And even today, Trump is so distracted that his own scientific advisors have to fact-check him publicly because he is more concerned with saying whatever he thinks will make people “happy” and help his poll numbers than he is in actually giving true information to people whose lives depend on it. And his supporters, including many in the conservative media and Republican leadership, continue to insist that the whole coronavirus issue is being overblown merely to undermine Trump. They are still distracted. Some are distracted by the chance for financial gain.[19] Some are distracted by their personal political ambitions, or their desire to hurt Democrats and aid Donald Trump even if it costs American lives.[20] Many are distracted, to this day, by the impeachment, continuing to see everything as a plot against Trump. And many, many are distracted by a simple resentment of “elites,” people who have educations and expertise, who have spent decades serving society by learning about health threats without partisan bias, serving the public under administrations of both parties and thus becoming that evil “Big Government” they have been trained to hate and despise by decades of right-wing messaging.
Perhaps we should fire this distractible party, and replace it will a group that actually pays attention to the business of government—-you know, like the party that originally wrote the anti-pandemic playbook which the Trump administration threw out, which established the pandemic-preparedness planning group that Trump fired, and which handled the Ebola and Swine Flu epidemics so that they DIDN’T kill fifty thousand Americans and counting in less than three months.
[1] Elizabeth Janowski, “Timeline: Trump Impeachment Inquiry;” NBC News February 5, 2020 (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/timeline-trump-impeachment-inquiry-n1066691)
[2] Nahal Toosi, Daniel Lippman and Dan Diamond, “Before Trump’s Inauguration, a Warning: ‘The Worst Influenza Pandemic Since 1918’;” Politico March 16, 2020 (https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/16/trump-inauguration-warning-scenario-pandemic-132797)
[3] Veronica Stracqualursi, “ABC News: US Intelligence Warned of China’s Spreading Contagion in November;” CNN, April 8, 2020 (https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/08/politics/us-intelligence-report-china-coronavirus/index.html)
[4] CNN Editorial Research, “Coronavirus Outbreak Timeline Fast Facts;” CNN April 22, 2020 (https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/06/health/wuhan-coronavirus-timeline-fast-facts/index.html )
[5] Caroline Kelly, “Washington Post: US Intelligence Warned Trump in January and February as he Dismissed Coronavirus Threat;” CNN March 21, 2020 (https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/20/politics/us-intelligence-reports-trump-coronavirus/index.html)
[6] Bethania Palma, “Did President Trump Refer to Coronavirus as a ‘Hoax’?” Snopes March 2, 2020 (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-coronavirus-rally-remark/)
[7] Dennis Romero, “1st US Coronavirus Death was Weeks Earlier than Initially Believed;” NBC News April 22, 2020 (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/first-u-s-coronavirus-death-happened-weeks-earlier-originally-believed-n1189286)
[8] Jonathan V. Last, “The Malicious Irresponsibility of Rush Limbaugh;” The Bulwark April 2, 2020 (https://thebulwark.com/newsletter-issue/38752/)
[9] Jeremy W. Peters, “Alarm, Denial, Blame: The Pro-Trump Media’s Coronavirus Distortion;” The New York Times April 1, 2020 (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/us/politics/hannity-limbaugh-trump-coronavirus.html)
[10] Aaron Rupar, “Hannity Claims He’s ‘Never Called the Virus a Hoax’ 9 Days after Decrying Democrats’ ‘new hoax’;” Vox March 20, 2020 (https://www.vox.com/2020/3/20/21186727/hannity-coronavirus-coverage-fox-news)
[11] Chas Danner, “Trump Says Coronavirus Testing is as ‘Perfect’ as his Phone Call;” Intelligencer March 6, 2020 (https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/trump-coronavirus-testing-as-perfect-as-ukraine-call.html)
[12] Matt Wilstein, “Fox Business Ditches Trish Regan After Coronavirus ‘Impeachment Scam’ Rant;” Daily Beast March 28, 2020.
[13] Aaron Rupar, “Trump Commits to Helping Blue States Fight the Coronavirus——If Their Governors Are Nice to Him;” Vox March 25, 2020 (https://www.vox.com/2020/3/25/21193803/trump-to-governors-coronavirus-help-ventilators-cuomo)
[14] Jake Lahut, “Dr. Anthony Fauci Did a Facepalm After Trump Mentioned the ‘Deep State Department’ in a Wild Coronavirus Briefing;” Business Insider March 20, 2020 (https://www.businessinsider.com/dr-anthony-fauci-did-a-facepalm-during-trumps-coronavirus-briefing-2020-3)
[15] Matthew Wright, “President Trump is Eviscerated on Social Media for Making a Tasteless Joke About Being ‘Involved’ with Models as He Talks About Coronavirus DEATH Trajectory;” Daily Mail April 4, 2020 (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8187225/Trump-makes-joke-involved-models-talks-coronavirus-DEATH.html)
[16] Kevin Liptak and Kaitlan Collins, “How a Media-Distracted Trump Ended Up Derailing His Own Briefing;” CNN April 25, 2020 (https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/25/politics/donald-trump-coronavirus-task-force-science/index.html)
[17]Stephen Collinson, “Trump Sees ‘LIght at the End of the Tunnel’ at Start of ‘Pearl Harbor’ Week;” CNN April 6, 2020 (https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/06/politics/donald-trump-coronavirus-history-health-economy/index.html)
[18] Jonathan Alter, “Trump’s Lost Months Are Killing Us. Here’s How to Make Them Politically Fatal for Him;” The Daily Beast April 4, 2020 (https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-lost-months-killing-us-011244950.html)
[19] Matthew S. Schwartz, “Missouri Sues Televangelist Jim Bakker for Selling Fake Coronavirus Cure;” NPR March 11, 2020 (https://www.npr.org/2020/03/11/814550474/missouri-sues-televangelist-jim-bakker-for-selling-fake-coronavirus-cure)
[20] Scott Bixby, “DeVos Has Deep Ties to Protest Group, but is Quiet on Tactics;” Daily Beast April 21, 2020 (https://www.thedailybeast.com/devos-has-deep-ties-to-michigan-protest-group-but-is-quiet-on-tactics)
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