“When the house is on fire and there’s a five-alarm fire, you have an obligation to let people know. If not, they’re going to burn and they’re going to die,” U.S. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” cable TV program today about President Trump’s admissions that he deliberately downplayed the Covid-19 crisis.
Schumer was livid when responding to questions about revelations contained in the new book “Rage” by Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, famed for the newspaper’s coverage of the Watergate scandal. In preparing the book, Woodward had a series of lengthy interviews with Trump, some in person and some on the phone. He made the recordings with Trump’s knowledge.
In the recordings, Trump admitted to having known early, before the virus exploded, about the potential for Covid-19 to cause illness and death in the U.S. Trump admits he deliberately decided to downplay the pandemic and lied to the American people about the dangers while refusing to ramp up a national response. He said on Fox News that at the time he did not want to panic people about the virus.
On Woodward’s recordings, Trump said he knew that Covid-19 was at least five-times more deadly than influenza, yet he told the public it wasn’t as bad as the flu and would just go away. Trump admitted to knowing early that young people can become infected and die from Covid, yet he publicly told parents and youth they had nothing to fear.
Trump told Woodward that he knew the virus is easily spread through the air, yet he publicly advised people against wearing masks and maintaining social distancing while pushing for schools and businesses to reopen and staging his own events designed to attract large crowds in confined spaces.
“This awful tragedy can be summed up in four words: Trump lied, people died,” Schumer said.
“When we look at the rest of the world and we see why are they doing better than we are in fighting this awful Covid rage, the reason is very simple. They have some leadership. We have none. We’ve had dishonest, lying leadership. The president seems to care only about his own ego. He’s always good at coming up with excuses for his perfidious lies, his mistakes. And this time he said he doesn’t want to panic people? Really? Is this the same president who’s busy panicking America right now, telling women in the suburbs that you’re safety is at risk when the suburbs are not at any risk at all in that way? He doesn’t mind panicking people when it serves his interest.”
Schumer said that he hopes the release of the recordings of Trump and the Woodward book will serve to wake up some of Trump’s supporters.
When program host Mika Brzezinski recounted that Trump admitted to Woodward that he had been briefed about Covid and understood what could happen in this country, Schumer interrupted.
“There are thousands of my fellow New Yorkers who are dead right now and it can be directly attributed to the president’s lack of action, lying about this crisis, no question about it,” Schumer said.
“That’s why we don’t have testing. That’s why we are not on top of this, because he swept it under the rug. On January 26, I called for the president to make it a national emergency. He did nothing for months,” Schumer said.
Schumer also did not mince words when it came to those in the administration surrounding Trump.
“Where were the people around Trump? They should have blown the whistle. They should have said something. This was a national crisis,” Schumer said. “This crisis was so big, so enormous, that the usual Trump tactics of belittling it, ignoring it, lying about it, diverting attention to something else just didn’t work.”
Showing anger and frustration, Schumer lashed out at his Republican colleagues in the Senate saying they should be calling on Trump to speak the truth and should tell people in the administration to stop going along with the lies.
“Where the hell are you? This is a national crisis. This man (Trump) lies about everything,” Schumer said. “We heard he’s lying about Russian interference, the sacredness of our elections, and they are mum. Where are they at this time of national crisis?”
Schumer predicted that history will record this as “a dark moment” for the Republican Senate.
“You had a president who did this and they bowed down in obedience,” Schumer said. “They’re scared to death of him because they know he’s vindictive and, frankly, he has a base in each of their states. The base isn’t enough to get him elected. That’s why they’re in such a pickle. They need to move to the middle and they can’t.”
Schumer alleged that Trump really doesn’t care about anyone but himself.
“You could have been the loyalest Trump supporter for years and if he thinks it serves his momentary egotistical interest to throw you under the bus, to trash you, to hurt you, to even harm you with illness, he’ll do it,” Schumer said.
“Trump is in his own bubble. He doesn’t even know what’s good for him. He lies to himself.”
