March 11, 2020

The Biggest Lie in Donald Trump’s Coronavirus Address

The president said we’re “more prepared” than any other country. We’re so not.

Doug Mills/The New York Times/AP

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On Wednesday night, Donald Trump announced that he would restrict travel from Europe—excluding the United Kingdom—beginning on Friday, for the next 30 days. “Anything coming from Europe to the United States is what we are discussing,” he said.

The president also attempted to reassure the country by saying the United States is “more prepared” to fight the pandemic than any other nation. “The virus will not have a chance against us,” he said.

Public health officials beg to differ. Our hospitals, experts say, are severely underprepared for the expected number of coronavirus cases. According to biologist Liz Specht, writing in STAT, the United States has about 2.8 hospital beds per 1,000 people, and if 10 percent of coronaviruses cases require hospitalization, beds will be at capacity by early- to mid-May. (And, given the lack of testing in the US, it’s not clear how many Americans have been infected in the first place.) On top of that, as my colleagues Will Peischel and Jessica Washington reported last week, in 2018 Trump cut most of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s funding for fighting pandemics. That same year, the head of the National Security Council’s global pandemic team left his post, followed shortly after by the entire team. The positions remain empty.

Trump has also been criticized for his slow response to the coronavirus outbreak, and for his efforts to downplay the risk associated with it. In one memorable moment last week, Trump appeared to suggest that he didn’t want passengers trapped aboard the Grand Princess cruise ship, some of whom had become infected with the virus, off the coast of San Francisco to come ashore because it would make him look bad: “I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault,” he said.

He has also compared COVID-19 to “the regular flu,” suggesting the flu was more dangerous than the coronavirus (Indeed, the flu kills tens of thousands of people every year, but the coronavirus’ estimated mortality rate is higher than the flu, suggesting that a large-scale coronavirus outbreak in the United States would be very bad.)

It’s not even certain Trump’s travel restriction will be effective, now that we’re dealing with a global pandemic. Last month, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNBC, “When it was focused only on China, we had a period of time, temporary, that we could do a travel restriction that prevented cases from coming into the US.” He added, “When you have multiple countries involved, it’s very difficult to do; in fact, it’s almost impossible.”

Watch Trump’s remarks:

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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