Trump Slashed Staff at U.S. CDC Office in China

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“The Trump administration cut staff by more than two-thirds at a key U.S. public health agency operating inside China, as part of a larger rollback of U.S.-funded health and science experts on the ground there leading up to the coronavirus outbreak,” Reuters reports. “Most of the reductions were made at the Beijing office of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and occurred over the past two years.”

Coronavirus Crisis Blame Belongs Solely to Trump Administration

“In short, the Trump administration forced a catastrophic strategic surprise onto the American people. But unlike past strategic surprises—Pearl Harbor, the Iranian revolution of 1979, or especially 9/11—the current one was brought about by unprecedented indifference, even willful negligence. Whereas, for example, the 9/11 Commission Report assigned blame for the al Qaeda attacks on the administrations of presidents Ronald Reagan through George W. Bush, the unfolding coronavirus crisis is overwhelmingly the sole responsibility of the current White House.”

Foreign Policy

DeSantis Aligns with Trump on Coronavirus

“That is the dumbest shit I have heard in a long time. This is a day-by-day crisis. Italy damn near saw 1,000 people die in one day, and there are people proclaiming we got this and have it solved in 15 days?”

— Florida state Sen. Oscar Brayon (D). “While New York, California and other states shutter their economies to keep the coronavirus at bay, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is refusing to follow the herd,” Politico reports.“His cure-can’t-be-worse-than-the-disease approach has put the Republican governor under a glaring spotlight locally and nationally as cases of the virus in Florida surge past 1,400.”

Communities Are Competing for Ventilators

“We’re not going to give away our supply chains right now because it is that competitive.”

— County Executive Ryan McMahon (R), the top official in New York’s Onondaga County, said he had acquired 60 ventilators to be on hand when desperately ill patients with COVID-19 need help breathing, but he won’t say where he got them, the Syracuse Post-Standard reports.

Mixed Signals on the Coronavirus Fight

57%

A new CBS News poll finds 57% of Americans say the nation’s efforts to combat the coronavirus are going badly right now, most call it a crisis and see a months-long process before it is contained. But this is curious: 53% say President Trump is doing a good job handling the outbreak, and 54% are optimistic about his administration’s ability to handle it from here, though 66% also feel the Trump administration was not prepared to deal with it when it started.

We Need More Texans Who Are Prepared to Die for the Economy

“No one reached out to me and said, ‘As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?’ And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in. … I want to, you know, live smart and see through this, but I don’t want to see the whole country to be sacrificed, and that’s what I see.”

— Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R), chiming in to support President Trump’s new focus on the economy over fierce warnings from public health officials, suggested that he would rather die from the rapid spread of coronavirus than see instability in the American economic system, theTexas Tribune reports.

Trump Gives Self 10 Out of 10 Grade on Pandemic Response

“I’d rate it a 10. … I think we’ve done a great job, and it started with the fact that we kept a very highly-infected country, despite all of the, even the professionals saying it’s too early to do that. We were very, very early with respect to China and we would have a whole different situation in this country if we didn’t do that.”

— President Trump told reporters that he would rate his administration’s response to the coronavirus a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10, The Hill reports.