These warnings fell on deaf ears.
As a result, the piece notes, "Trump and lawmakers played down the threat and failed to take action that might have slowed the spread of the pathogen."
The report even detailed how the problem had gotten bad in parts of China because of a slow-footed government response. That was meant to be a warning, but it would end up being the approach Trump took himself, as well.
"Trump may not have been expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were — they just couldn’t get him to do anything about it," the article quotes one intelligence official.
It's not surprising that, as the piece notes, "a majority of the intelligence reporting included in daily briefing papers and digests from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA was about Covid-19."
Of course, Trump famously hates to read and tries to read as little as possible. It's no wonder, then, "inside the White House, Trump’s advisers struggled to get him to take the virus seriously."
For example, the Health and Human Services secretary tried to alert the President but his call wasn't accepted for days. When he could finally speak to Trump about the issue, the President abruptly shifted the topic to vaping.
When the topic finally was discussed with Trump's attention, per the piece, he "was dismissive because he did not believe that the virus had spread widely throughout the United States."
And when senior level officials brought up the issue to the media, Trump complained such talk was scaring the stock markets.
It was only until this past week, when things started to turn really bad, did Trump realize this was a serious crisis.
We cannot have a President who is this clueless. He must be defeated in this year's election.
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