Max Boot: "The worst president. Ever."

Click here for an article in The Washington Post By Yasmeen Abutaleb, Josh Dawsey, Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller, entitled "The U.S. was beset by denial and dysfunction as the coronavirus raged," subtitled "From the Oval Office to the CDC, political and institutional failures cascaded through the system and opportunities to mitigate the pandemic were lost."

Click here for another article in WaPo by Max Boot, entitled "The worst president. Ever," in which Boot says, "The Post article [above] is the most thorough dissection of Trump’s failure to prepare for the gathering storm."

It didn't have to happen this way, says the WsPo article: "Though not perfectly prepared, the United States had more expertise, resources, plans and epidemiological experience than dozens of countries that ultimately fared far better in fending off the virus"; "Warnings were sounded, including at the highest levels of government, but the president was deaf to them until the enemy had already struck."

The Trump administration received its first formal notification of the outbreak of the coronavirus in China on Jan. 3. Within days, U.S. spy agencies were signaling the seriousness of the threat to Trump by including a warning about the coronavirus — the first of many — in the President’s Daily Brief.

And yet, it took 70 days from that initial notification for Trump to treat the coronavirus not as a distant threat or harmless flu strain well under control, but as a lethal force that had outflanked America’s defenses and was poised to kill tens of thousands of citizens. That more-than-two-month stretch now stands as critical time that was squandered.

Republicans, many believing the story that the whole thing was a "Democrat hoax" to bring down the president after impeachment had failed, were influenced by "scornful coverage on Fox News and other conservative networks. As a result, Republicans were in distressingly large numbers refusing to change travel plans, follow “social distancing” guidelines, stock up on supplies or otherwise take the coronavirus threat seriously."

The article concluded:

In reality, many of the failures to stem the coronavirus outbreak in the United States were either a result of, or exacerbated by, his leadership.

For weeks, he had barely uttered a word about the crisis that didn’t downplay its severity or propagate demonstrably false information. He dismissed the warnings of intelligence officials and top public health officials in his administration.

I've only scratched the surface. The article, "which retraces the failures over the first 70 days of the coronavirus crisis, is based on 47 interviews with administration officials, public health experts, intelligence officers and others involved in fighting the pandemic. Many spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information and decisions." The whole article is well worth reading.