Denial, dismissal, finger-pointing, bleach: How Trump took on coronavirus

War in Iran having failed to materialise and, freshly acquitted by the Senate, Donald Trump was in upbeat form in February 2020.

The only blot on his horizon was the emergence of a deadly new respiratory disease in the city of Wuhan, China, but the president had rejected the significance of Covid-19 out of hand, telling the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, a day after the first American case had been recorded on 21 January: “We have this totally under control.”

After the World Health Organisation declared a global emergency on 30 January, Trump moved to shut down air travel from China as a precaution and assumed that would be sufficient to block its arrival on American shores.

He would make several more disastrous statements downplaying the dawning disaster, even reassuring a crowd in New Hampshire that the novel coronavirus would “miraculously” disappear in spring with the warm weather.

As the crisis accelerated in the Far East and southern Europe, the president set out for a two-day state visit to India on 24 February, where he was welcomed in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, by bear-hugging prime minister Narendra Modi.

As repayment for hosting a “Howdy Modi” event in Houston, Texas, the previous September, the president was treated to a “Namaste Trump” rally at the Motera cricket stadium, where he was generously introduced by Modi before addressing the 100,000-strong crowd and memorably mangling the pronunciation of several key names, making a particular hash of “Swami Vivekananda” and “Sachin Tendulkar”.

The trip would see the “world’s biggest democracy” carefully shield the cameras from the dire poverty in which many of its citizens lived and attempt to hush up riots in Delhi as Trump and his entourage toured Mahatma Gandhi's home and posed for pictures at the Taj Mahal, the latter an unfortunate reminder of one of his failed Atlantic City casino ventures all those years ago.

The vegetarian dinners the president was subjected to during the visit were reported with glee – he famously favoured a Rat Pack-style spread of steak, fried chicken and fries – and coincided with White House physician Dr Ronny Jackson admitting to The New York Times that he had been reduced to sneaking cauliflower into Trump’s meals at home and ensuring that ice cream was kept out of his reach.

As the president returned home, he was infuriated to learn that Dr Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Centre for Immunisation and Respiratory Diseases, had issued a blunt warning about the coronavirus that had spooked the stock market.

“It’s not so much a question of if this will happen anymore but rather more a question of exactly when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness,” she had said. “Disruption to everyday life might be severe.”

Trump reportedly raged on Air Force One and stewed about firing her – his re-election hopes were pinned to a strong economy – but relented, instead responding by appointing Mike Pence to head up the White House Coronavirus Task Force, comprised of the likes of US global Aids coordinator Dr Deborah Birx, infectious diseases expert Dr Anthony Fauci and Centres for Disease Control (CDC) director Dr Robert Redfield.

While the specialists were already advocating social distancing, the president continued to understate the virus and repeated his contention that it would just disappear, likening Covid to the common cold and making fanciful boasts about rolling out mass testing to contain it.

“The infection seems to have gone down over the last two days,” he said at the White House on 26 February. “We’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time.”

To his supporters, congregating in large numbers at a rally in South Carolina on 28 February, his approach was markedly different: coronavirus was really just the Democrats’ “new hoax” to unseat him, he told them.

During a rather cocky visit to the CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, a week later, Trump declared that the virus was an “unforeseen problem” that “came out of nowhere”, overlooking the fact that he had first been briefed on the seriousness of its threat by health secretary Alex Azar as early as 18 January and had been more interested in discussing vaping regulations at the time.

The president also refused to come to the aid of cruise ship passengers stranded aboard the Grand Princess in the San Francisco Bay after 21 people tested positive.

“I like the numbers being where they are. I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault,” he said.

“I don’t take responsibility at all,” he was insisting by 13 March as the situation worsened by the day, announcing a national emergency after hosting a Brazilian delegation led by Jair Bolsonaro at Mar-a-Lago, several of whose members were subsequently found to be infected.

On 16 March, the president told Americans not to gather in groups of more than 10 as the states began to shut down, taking California’s lead until 30 were closed for business by the end of the month.

Trump closed the border with Canada and introduced a European travel ban as case numbers and deaths slowly but surely climbed, with New York City emerging as the North American epicentre of the outbreak and suffering gravely.

Aghast at the impact this was already having on the economy, Trump was soon referring to the disease by the Sinophobic slur “the China virus” to ensure he wasn’t blamed and, by 24 March, was already losing patience and advocating reopening the economy in time for Easter, prioritising neat reality TV symbolism over the science.

“WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF,” he tweeted.

The president’s daily press conferences were already becoming combative by the time he called NBC’s Peter Alexander a “terrible reporter” for asking if he had a message for frightened Americans – and worsened when Trump irresponsibly endorsed the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a possible treatment, despite its efficacy being unproven and its side effects including a heart attack risk.

By the end of April, he had begun agitating against Democratic state governors like Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer who refused to lift strict lockdown measures, actively encouraging “Operation Gridlock” protests against her by armed militia organising on Facebook, tweeting: “LIBERATE MICHIGAN”.

Worse, he had seriously suggested on the 23rd that injecting household bleach into the human body could help fend off the disease, a landmark moment in the history of idiocy.

“I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute,” he had said, ungrammatically. “And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs.”

Looking on, Dr Birx said nothing, staring awkwardly at her shoes, utterly mortified.

Read the full The Trump Review series here