David Corn: New Revelations Emerge on How Donald Trump Killed 400,000 (or More) Americans

David Corn: New Revelations Emerge on How Donald Trump Killed 400,000 (or More) Americans
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/11/new-revelations-emerge-on-how-donald-trump-killed-400000-coronavirus-pandemic/

New Revelations Emerge on How Donald Trump Killed 400,000 (or More) Americans

We keep learning more about Trump’s deadly mishandling of the pandemic.
David Corn


The congressional January 6 investigation has been drawing great attention lately, particularly as it has triggered the federal indictment of Steve Bannon for defying its subpoena, fired off other subpoenas at Mark Meadows and assorted Trumpers, and sought to obtain Trump White House records related to the insurrectionist attack on the Capitol. At the same time, a different congressional investigation, with much less notice, has been pursuing another profound betrayal committed by Donald Trump and his crew: the lethal mismanagement of the COVID-19 crisis. That inquiry broke into the headlines a few days ago with the news of more evidence that the Trump White House impeded the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s efforts to warn Americans about the pandemic.

On Friday, the Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis, which is chaired by Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), released interviews and documents revealing how senior Trump officials tried to block government health officials from informing the public about the seriousness of COVID-19. On February 25, 2020, Nancy Messonnier, a senior CDC health expert, warned in a news briefing that the virus’s spread in the United States was inevitable. That enraged Trump, who was trying to downplay the coronavirus threat. The new material shows that the Trump administration tried to shut her up. And Anne Schuchat, a top CDC official, told the committee that Trump officials scrambled to hold a briefing hours after Messonnier’s warning, though “there was nothing new to report.”

The story gets worse: Between March 9 and May 29 of last year, the CDC held no press briefings. In testimony to the committee, Kate Galatas, a CDC communications official, said the White House repeatedly thwarted the agency’s attempts to schedule such briefings, including one in April that would have emphasized the need to wear masks to contain the virus’s spread.

And worse: Dr. Deborah Birx, who was the White House COVID-19 task force coordinator, told the committee that Dr. Scott Atlas, a radiologist (not an infectious disease specialist) who was advising Trump on COVID, leaned on the CDC to alter its guidelines on testing to recommend that only symptomatic people be tested. (This would have yielded lower numbers of confirmed cases.) Government scientists, worried about asymptomatic people spreading the disease, thought it was important for symptomatic and asymptomatic people to get tested. Atlas’ pressure, though, led to CDC guidance in August 2020 on testing that was less vigorous. This revised recommendation, Birx told the committee, “resulted in less testing and…less aggressive testing of those without symptoms that I believed were the primary reason for the early community spread.” A month later, the CDC reinstituted the more expansive testing directive. It was released over “objections from senior White House personnel,” according to Birx.

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It’s tough to think of a topic more deserving of congressional oversight than the government’s mishandling of a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands and caused economic hardship for tens of millions of Americans. (A seditious violent assault on Congress, as part of an effort to overturn an election, comes to mind, too.) For obvious reasons, Trump and the GOP do not want scrutiny of this policy debacle that was driven by Trump’s narcissism and incompetence. For the health of the republic, Clyburn should press ahead.