Help us expose Trump's coronavirus lying

Trump's response to COVID-19 thus far has been a disaster. Despite repeated warnings from the intelligence community of the impending global pandemic, Trump for months downplayed the virus and we lost valuable time in this fight - and that has cost us American lives.

Please donate today to help us get this first ad in a series on the air.

We want to spread the word about all the lies, missteps, and misleading statements Trump made to downplay the virus: 

• March 2017 - Trump’s team all but ignored a pandemic response training from the Obama administration. Read more here.

• May 2018 - Trump fired the White House global pandemic response team in 2018. Read more here.

• September 2019 - Two months before the novel coronavirus is thought to have begun its deadly advance in Wuhan, China, the Trump administration ended a $200-million pandemic early-warning program aimed at training scientists in China and other countries to detect and respond to such a threat

• Jan. 22 - A reporter asks if there are worries about a pandemic. Trump responds: "No. Not at all. And 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."

• Jan. 24 - Trump tweets, "It will all work out well."

• Jan. 30 - Trump holds a campaign rally in Iowa - "We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment — five, we think it’s going to have a very good ending for it."

• Feb. 2 - Trump tells Fox News host Sean Hannity, "We pretty much shut it down coming in from China."

• Feb 14: Trump discusses the "very small" number of U.S. coronavirus cases with Border Patrol Council members: "We have a very small number of people in the country, right now, with it. It’s like around 12. Many of them are getting better. Some are fully recovered already. So we’re in very good shape."

• Feb. 19 - Trump told a Phoenix television station, “I think the numbers are going to get progressively better as we go along.” Four days later, he pronounced the situation “very much under control,” and added: “We had 12, at one point. And now they’ve gotten very much better. Many of them are fully recovered.”

• Feb. 24 - The same day, Trump asks for $1.25 billion in emergency aid. It grows to $8.3 billion in Congress.He tweets that the virus "is very much under control" and the stock market "starting to look very good to me!"

• Feb. 26 - Trump says we only have 15 cases and that will be going down to zero very soon.

• Feb. 27 - On Feb. 27, he predicted: “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.” 

• Feb. 29 - On Feb. 29, he said a vaccine would be available “very quickly” and “very rapidly” and praised his administration’s actions as “the most aggressive taken by any country.” None of these claims were true.

• March 2 - Trump suggested on multiple occasions that the virus was less serious than the flu. “We’re talking about a much smaller range” of deaths than from the flu, he said on March 2.

• March 4 - “It’s very mild,” he told Hannity on March 4. 

• March 4 - In a Fox News interview, Trump deflects criticism to his response by saying the Obama administration (including the vice president, Joe Biden) "didn't do anything about" swine flu. Politifact rated the claim False.

• March 4 - Trump continues to blame the Obama administration in an exchange with reporters at the White House: "The Obama administration made a decision on testing that turned out to be very detrimental to what we’re doing." A Politifact fact-check shows the process dated back to 2006, before Obama took office. So the claim is False. 

• March 6 - Alex Azar, the secretary of health and human services, told ABC, “There is no testing kit shortage, nor has there ever been.” Trump, while touring the C.D.C. on March 6, said, “Anybody that wants a test can get a test.”

• March 7 - On March 7, Trump said, “I’m not concerned at all.” 

• March 10 - On March 10, he promised: “It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”

• March 17 - Trump says "I've always known this is a real, this is a pandemic. I've felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic." As this timeline shows, however, Trump minimized the threat of a pandemic for many weeks. Politfact said Pants on Fire!

• March 17 - Asked if the World Health Organization had offered detection tests to the United States, Trump said WHO had not, and that the WHO coronavirus test "was a bad test." False. WHO said three independent labs had validated the test, and the White House coordinator for coronavirus response said she assumed the WHO test is effective.

• March 30 - Trump tells Fox News: "We inherited a broken test" for COVID-19. Trump’s impossible claim is Pants on Fire. There could be no test before the new virus emerged. China first confirmed its existence Dec. 31, 2019, and shared its genetic sequence Jan. 7. The CDC’s first shipment of tests to states contained tainted reagents. That and bureaucratic delays cost the U.S. several critical weeks in testing.

Please donate today and help below in two other ways:

1) Urge Trump to stop dragging his feet and use the #DefenseProductionAct to get us masks and ventilators here.

2) And visit the #MasksNOW Coalition at www.MasksNOW.org to help health care workers on the frontlines protect themselves.

You can learn more about us here: www.DemocraticCoalition.org