Why Did the Trump Administration Procrastinate Fighting the Coronavirus Threat for Months?

March 24th 2020

President Trump Signs NASA Transition Authorization Act of 2017 (repmobrooks)

By Thom Hartman for BuzzFlash

The Associated Press recently did a good roundup story about how the Trump administration procrastinated for months before acknowledging the gravity of the situation that we face as a nation. It answers a lot of the “what“ questions, but answers none of the “why“ questions. Why did Trump procrastinate for two months? Was he trying to squeeze a few months extra revenue out of his hotels? Was it that he was watching Fox News and believing their spin, and then echoing it himself which caused Fox to pick it up and feed it back to him even more? Was hecreating a deadly right-wing media-feedback loop without even realizing it? Was it so his billionaire buddies could unload all their stocks before things crashed? Was it because he knew that I hit the economy would hurt his reelection chances and he thought maybe, just maybe you could just push his way through this? Why did Trump delay? It’s going to cost tens of thousands of lives, deaths that were completely unnecessary, and wreak massive damage to our healthcare system and the people who work in it. Why did he decide to do that, when he could see other countries getting this thing under control at the same time that Italy failed to because they followed policies similar to his? Why? America deserves an answer.

Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of The Hidden History of the War on Voting and more than 30 other books in print. His most recent project is a science podcast called The Science Revolution. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute.