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Donald Trump can’t pretend that he wasn’t warned about the possibility of a massive pandemic that the United States would be unprepared to deal with.
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According to NBC Foreign Affairs Analyst Brett McGurk — a former State Department official who served in the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations and is now a lecturer at Stanford University — one of the president’s now-fired intelligence chiefs, former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, included just such a scenario in the 2019 “Worldwide Threat Assessment” that he complied for the administration.
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Coats specifically warned the administration that “the United States and the world will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large-scale outbreak of a contagious disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, strain international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support.”
Trump says the coronavirus came “out of nowhere.” But last year, the DNI WARNED that we were vulnerable to a pandemic “that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, strain international resources…” 👇 https://t.co/D6uUabE2s2 pic.twitter.com/dAiCpFhp93
— Brett McGurk (@brett_mcgurk) March 8, 2020
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Whether Trump actually read Coats’ “Worldwide Threat Assessment” is unknown, but the president is well known for his aversion to any written documents that aren’t distilled down to a few bullet points or transmitted via coverage in a segment on Fox News.
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Specht goes on to detail how both facemasks and health care workers will be in short supply much sooner than anyone currently imagines.
Still, the damage that Donald Trump has done by failing to heed Coat’s warning and by spreading a culture of conspiracy theories and outright lies about the coronavirus and America’s vulnerability to it is exemplified by this response to her well-researched and intelligent analysis.
This is exactly the sort of ignorant, uninformed science and media denial that people who foolishly place their trust in the president subscribe to and almost makes one wish there was a direct correlation between susceptibility to catching the virus and IQ levels.
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Unfortunately, viruses like COVID-19 only discriminate based on age and overall health level, so make sure that you follow CDC guidelines and wash your hands with soap and water for long enough to sing happy birthday twice, or if you’re now sick of that cloying tune running through your brain, you can try these welcome alternatives.
If you're tired of singing "Happy Birthday" to yourself while washing your hands, here are some more funky alternatives. https://t.co/CTPgnFMLzk
— Vinnie Longobardo (@VLongobardo) March 7, 2020
As for Donald Trump and anyone else sharing his mendacious misinformation designed to help prevent the damage that his incompetence in dealing with the national health crisis is causing to his reelection prospects, once you’re finished washing your hands, use that soap to wash out your mouths as well.
Follow Vinnie Longobardo on Twitter.
Original reporting by Sarah K. Burris at RawStory.
