Analysis by Daniel Dale
Updated 6:34 PM ET, Tue March 17, 2020

... "I've always known, this is a real -- this is a real -- this is a pandemic. I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic. All you had to do was look at other countries...no, I've always viewed it as very serious. It was no difference yesterday from days before. I feel the tone is similar, but some people said it wasn't" ...

Facts First: From January until last week, Trump consistently minimized the risk the coronavirus posed to the country. He claimed to have the virus under "control," that the number of US cases would go "down, not up," that the virus might "disappear" through a "miracle" or something of the sort, that the virus might well vanish by April with the warmer weather, that the media and Democrats were overhyping the situation, and that "this is their new hoax" ...

Prior to the World Health Organization's official pandemic declaration on March 11, Trump had never told Americans that he viewed the situation as a potential pandemic. When he was asked by CNBC in an interview that aired January 22 if there were worries about a pandemic, he responded, "No. Not at all. And -- we're -- we have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It's going to be just fine."

On March 9, Trump tweeted, "So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!" On March 10, the day before the WHO's pandemic declaration, Trump said, "And we're prepared, and we're doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away" ...

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/17/politics/fact-check-trump-always-knew-pandemic-coronavirus/index.html

comments on social media. They don't deny the lie, they just brush it off with "Trump will win 4 more years" or some comment or other.

Monday, March 16, 2020
By Associated Press

... “It started out with really what can only be described as full-blown denial,” said Brian Ott, a communication studies professor at Texas Tech University who has done extensive research on the president’s social media rhetoric. “Then as the crisis spread and as it became a pandemic ... it just wasn't viable rhetoric anymore because it wasn't at all where the American public was at.”

Early on, the president downplayed the coronavirus as something similar to the seasonal flu — nothing that Americans should be overly concerned about and something that would quickly pass.

His optimistic public comments often didn’t match the reality on the ground or even how U.S. public health agencies were approaching the looming crisis behind the scenes.

In one of his first substantive public remarks on the virus, during a visit in late January to an auto parts manufacturer in Michigan, Trump acknowledged that the U.S. had seen a smattering of infections but predicted a “very good ending for it” ...

https://www.kpbs.org/news/2020/mar/16/arc-trumps-coronavirus-comments-defies-reality-gro/

March 17, 20205:02 AM ET
DOMENICO MONTANARO

... Just 37% of Americans now say they had a good amount or a great deal of trust in what they're hearing from the president, while 60% say they had not very much or no trust at all in what he's saying.

The president rates worst of all groups tested, be it public health officials, state and local leaders or the news media. And more Americans disapprove of the president's handling of the pandemic than approve by a 49%-44% margin. But that does not differ greatly from his overall job approval rating, which stands at 43%.

That's largely unchanged from the last survey in February, and 51% still said they approve of the president's handling of the economy, despite the massive slides in the stock market of late ...

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/17/816680033/poll-americans-dont-trust-what-they-re-hearing-from-trump-on-coronavirus

Published 10 hours ago
By Andrew O'Reilly, John Roberts | Fox News

CEOs from some of the world’s largest hotel chains told President Trump on Tuesday that they are being forced to lay off tens of thousands of employees as occupancy rates plummet and global travel comes to a near-standstill amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump met at the White House Tuesday with the heads of Hilton, Marriott, Best Western and other major hotel chains to discuss the impact that the COVID-19 virus is having on their businesses. While the CEOs promised that it would be business as usual once the coronavirus crisis has passed, they told the president that they are being forced to shutter many of their hotels in the meantime and need to find a way to stay financially afloat amid the outbreak.

“I have been in this business for 35 years and I have never seen anything like it,” Christopher Nassetta of Hilton said ...

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hotel-ceos-tell-trump-coronavirus-is-forcing-thousands-of-layoffs

Analysis by Ronald Brownstein
Updated 2:07 PM ET, Tue March 17, 2020

... For supporters and opponents alike, questions about Trump's basic competence as a manager of the federal government have taken a back seat during his presidency to the fierce controversies over his personal behavior, his language (particularly on issues relating to race and culture) and his policy agenda.

But the federal government's unsteady response to the outbreak threatens Trump with the same public verdict that ultimately undermined predecessors such as Jimmy Carter during the Iranian hostage crisis and George W. Bush after Hurricane Katrina: a belief that he is simply overmatched by the practical demands of the presidency -- though he gave himself a perfect 10 rating on Monday for his handling of the crisis ...

The unprecedented scale and reach of the coronavirus challenge will test the assumption among many political experts that in our highly polarized political era, ideological and cultural affinity is eclipsing results in office as the principal determinant of a president's support ...

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/17/politics/trump-2020-coronavirus/index.html

By TINA NGUYEN
03/16/2020 04:30 AM EDT

... While the MAGA movement is divided over how seriously to take the coronavirus threat or how to tackle it, the message among his supporters is increasingly unanimous: If Trump fails to control the virus, prevent its spread and prove his leadership, much less save the economy, he will lose the election and cripple his movement.

Trump’s supporters elected him because they considered him a “wartime leader” who could fight against the swamp and the elites, so they expect the same against a truly invisible threat, said War Room host and former Breitbart editor Raheem Kassam. “If, for a second, people think that he doesn't have that strength, or he doesn't have that fortitude, then it will become a problem,” he said.

The mounting health and economic risks from the coronavirus outbreak present a monumental political challenge for a group vowing to make America great again. With just less than eight months before a presidential election, Trump’s followers face the prospect that their core message — about deconstructing the “deep state” of government workers and transforming the nation’s power structure to serve everyday Americans — could collapse in a crisis environment ...

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/16/trump-maga-coronavirus-movement-130831

Could not lead a squad in digging a shit trench successfully.

March 17, 2020, 6:03 PM EDT
By Ken Dilanian, Didi Martinez, Merritt Enright, Phil McCausland and Robin Muccari

... Jan. 22
While at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, President Donald Trump is asked whether he has a plan to contain the coronavirus in the U.S. Trump responds by saying that the U.S. does have a plan and that he thinks it’s “going to be handled very well.” He also said that he thinks China is in “very good shape” ...

Feb. 25
At a news conference in India, Trump says that the coronavirus is “well under control” and that there are “very few people with it” ...

Feb. 27
The Washington Post reports that a whistleblower complaint claimed that the Department of Health and Human Services sent more than a dozen workers without proper training or protective gear to assist with Americans evacuated from Wuhan, China. This account was later confirmed to NBC News by the whistleblower’s lawyer ...

March 10
President Trump meets with Republican lawmakers on the coronavirus.

“And when people need a test, they can get a test. When the professionals need a test, when they need tests for people, they can get the test. It's gone really well” ...

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/timeline-trump-administration-s-response-coronavirus-n1162206

By Daniel Dale
Updated 9:35 PM ET, Sun March 15, 2020

... Trump made yet another false claim to minimize the severity of the coronavirus crisis, claiming Sunday that the virus is under "control."

Trump's claim at a White House briefing -- "It's a very contagious virus. It's incredible. But it's something we have tremendous control of" -- was sharply at odds with the assessment of public health experts, including one who appeared with him at the same briefing.

Facts First: Experts say the US does not have the virus even close to contained. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in his own comments after Trump left the room: "The worst is yet ahead for us. It is how we respond to that challenge that is going to determine what the ultimate end point is going to be. We have a very, very critical point now."

Trump has repeatedly claimed, falsely, to have the virus under control. He said in late January, soon after the US announced its first confirmed case, that "we have it totally under control." He said in late February, when the number of confirmed US cases was in the low dozens, that "we have it very much under control in this country" ...

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/15/politics/fact-check-trump-control-coronavirus/index.html

By Emma Court
March 17, 2020, 6:00 AM EDT

... “We’re so far behind this thing at this point. And the reason we’re so far behind is because we’ve had so little testing,” said Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute ...

Washington missed an early opportunity to leverage the resources of the private sector, states and top-flight academic institutions to do what other countries have done to contain the virus — test as many people as possible. Instead, health authorities were left with a diagnostic tool developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that ran into weeks of problems, hobbling efforts to track and control the virus at a time when it might have been contained ...

“Our concern is Covid-19 has been with us for at least six or eight weeks and we haven’t known about it. We lost valuable time,” said Rod Hochman, chief executive officer of health system Providence St. Joseph Health, which is based in Washington and treated the first known U.S. patient with the new virus in January. “That’s something we are never going to get back, and right now we have to do the best with what we have” ...

President Donald Trump, asked to assess the U.S. response so far as well as the testing, said Monday that things had gone extremely well ...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-17/coronavirus-testing-shortage-u-s-called-private-sector-too-late

that is if they ever knew and/or acknowledged he blatantly lied to them in the first place.