IT’S GOING TO BE FINE, HE SAID. NOW OVER 1,800 AMERICANS ARE DEAD . . .
January 22: ‘We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China.’
Jan 30: ‘We have a very little problem in this country at the moment. Only five people in US, all in good recovery.’
February 2: ‘We pretty much shut it down coming in from China. It’s going to be fine.’
Feb 10: ‘It looks like by April, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.’ Feb 24: ‘The coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.’ Feb 25: ‘We’re doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus’.
Feb 26: ‘Fake News is doing everything possible to make Caronavirus [sic] look as bad as possible.
‘We’re going very substantially down – not up. Within a couple of days the number is going to be down to close to zero.’
Feb 28: First US death.
March 4: He compares the virus to normal flu – ‘which kills between 27,000 and 77,000 people every year. It’s very mild’.
Mar 9: ‘The Fake News Media, and the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power to inflame the situation.’ Mar 10: ‘It will go away. Just stay calm.’ ‘People are surprised I understand it. Every one of the doctors said, “How do you know so much about this?” Maybe I have a natural ability.’ Mar 13, national emergency declared: ‘I’ve always known this is a real pandemic.’
Mar 16: ‘We have a problem that a month ago nobody ever thought about.’ In fact, it was a problem that everyone thought about – apart from Trump.
Mar 28: New York Times reports 113,031 positive tests, 1,895 deaths.