Rage

by Bob Woodward

Coats realized nobody in the Senate needed to be told what was happening. They knew. The senators just desperately wanted to get past the November 3 election.

If he was still in the Senate, Coats believed the worst course of action would be not to speak up, lose the Senate majority and lose your reputation. He believed the Senate had not fulfilled its obligation under the Constitution to be a check and balance. There should be a moment to demand accountability from Trump.

The military always tells you the alliances with NATO and South Korea are the best bargain the United States makes, I noted, a great investment in joint defense. “The military people are wrong,” Trump said. “I wouldn’t say they were stupid, because I would never say that about our military people. But if they said that, they—whoever said that was stupid. It’s a horrible bargain. We’re protecting South Korea from North Korea, and they’re making a fortune with televisions and ships and everything else. Right? They make so much money. Costs us $10 billion. We’re suckers.”

It costs the United States approximately $4.5 billion annually to station troops in South Korea, $920 million of which is paid by the South Korean government.

“I don’t know. I don’t think Obama’s smart,” Trump said. “See? I think he’s highly overrated. And I don’t think he’s a great speaker.

Redfield again spoke with Gao. He reported to O’Brien and Pottinger. The call was both troubling and bizarre. China was stonewalling.

By January 5, according to the CDC Situational Report #5, there were 59 cases in Wuhan, more than double in four days.

The CDC posted a Level 1 travel notice for Wuhan on January 6.

Redfield called and suggested to Gao that the Chinese go out and test people who had not been to the market. Soon Gao reported that they had identified cases not associated with the market. The January 8 Situational Report noted that now there were only “some epidemiologic links” to the market.

On January 10, Chinese scientists published the genome of the virus online, giving international scientists their first glimpse of the new coronavirus.

The CDC Situational Report for January 13 alerted readers that “Thailand reported a confirmed case of nCoV in a traveler from Wuhan City to Thailand.

That report hit Redfield hard. It told him, almost for sure, that there was human-to-human spread and the disease was being carried outside China.

Meanwhile, Redfield had another phone conversation with Gao. You can’t believe what’s going on over here, Gao said. It’s much, much worse than you’re hearing. Holy shit, Fauci said. They haven’t been telling us the truth. It is really transmitting efficiently.

O’Brien knew the Chinese were going to try to get out of Dodge. The mayor of Wuhan had acknowledged as much on January 26, saying five million people had left the city in the week before the Chinese government locked it down.

Finally, Azar spoke. “Today President Trump took decisive action to minimize the risk of the spread of novel coronavirus in the United States,” he announced. “I have today declared that the coronavirus presents a public health emergency in the United States.” He said that U.S. citizens returning from China would undergo 14 days of mandatory quarantine, and that Trump had signed a presidential proclamation “temporarily suspending the entry into the United States of foreign nationals who pose a risk of transmitting the 2019 novel coronavirus”—namely foreign nationals who had traveled in China within the last 14 days. Azar called the measure “prudent, targeted and temporary” and stressed once more that “the risk of infection for Americans remains low.”

Despite the conclusive evidence that at least five people wanted the restrictions—Fauci, Azar, Redfield, O’Brien and Pottinger—in an interview March 19, President Trump told me he deserved exclusive credit for the travel restrictions from China. “I had 21 people in my office, in the Oval Office, and of the 21 there was one person that said we have to close it down. That was me. Nobody wanted to because it was too early.”

Even when he made what appears to have been a tough and sound decision on the advice of his top national security and medical experts, he wanted—and took—all the credit for himself.

In total, 10 Republican senators who voted to acquit said in statements or interviews Trump’s actions were wrong, improper or inappropriate.

Trump had persisted in making multiple offers to send U.S. health officials, but had gotten nowhere with Xi.

Branswell asked about the danger of possibly downplaying the risk the virus posed to the U.S. Fauci said, “The risk is really relatively low.” He posed a hypothetical: How would it be, he asked, if he got up and said, “ ‘I’m telling you we’ve really, really got a big risk of getting completely wiped out,’ and then nothing happens?” Then, he said, “your credibility is gone.” Fauci knew he was walking the finest of lines. The U.S. would never shut down with so few cases. If he proposed extreme remedies too soon, not only would he lose his credibility, but no one would listen or take action.

In late February, China finally allowed World Health Organization scientists to enter the country to investigate. Redfield had wanted to send his team of investigators but only one CDC official was allowed in the group. Fauci’s deputy director, Dr. Clifford Lane, was the only other American allowed to join the delegation to China from February 16 to February 24. The report released by the group indicated that asymptomatic infection was “relatively rare and does not appear to be a major driver of transmission” and praised China for “perhaps the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history.”

But neither American on the delegation had been allowed into Wuhan, the epicenter of the disease.

As February drew to a close, the virus spread through Europe, most prominently in Italy, Asia and the Middle East. Global markets dipped.

But on February 25, as Trump boarded Air Force One to return from a state visit to India, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, issued a stark public warning. Schools might have to close, conferences might be curtailed, and businesses may have to have employees work from home. “The disruption to everyday life may be severe,” she told reporters. “It’s not so much a question of if this will happen anymore, but rather more a question of when this will happen, and how many people in this country will have severe illness.”

The headlines echoed her warnings: “Viral Crisis in U.S. Is Deemed Likely,” The New York Times said. “Threat to Americans called ‘inevitable,’ ” The Washington Post reported. The S&P 500 fell more than 3 percent for the second day in a row. Trump, on his way back to the U.S. from India, called Azar and threatened to fire Messonnier.

Parscale conducted focus groups in 12 different cities in eight states all over the country with over 1,000 people about the presidential race. One question was: Would you vote for someone you like but don’t agree with his policies, or would you vote for someone you don’t like but you like his policies? “One hundred percent said, I’ll vote for the guy I don’t like, but like his policies. One thousand to zero.” Whether true or not, it seemed to be his strong view.

Graham believed Trump’s decision to shut down for 15 days was probably the first time in Trump’s life when he had to make a decision that was not in his best interest politically or financially.

For Redfield it was one of the most difficult times of his four-decade professional life. “15 Days to Slow the Spread” was important, but not enough.

The president maintained his upbeat rhetoric in the early weeks of the virus had been deliberate. “I wanted to always play it down,” Trump told me, as I reported earlier in this book. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

The rambling, repetitious, often defensive and angry monologues eroded confidence in his grasp of the problem and his leadership.

health care workers. Complaints about a lack of preparation were universal. For two years Redfield had testified before Congress that the country was not prepared for a large health crisis.

Shortly before midnight on March 22, Trump tweeted in all-caps, “WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!”

Kushner’s team predeployed ventilators so that every time they got to about 96 hours away from running out, they sent them another 500. New York and New Jersey came close a few times on ventilators.

New York governor Andrew Cuomo was holding daily press conferences that were getting high marks, and he loudly complained about the lack of ventilators, at one point saying New York needed 40,000 more ventilators. Trump called Kushner. Jared, why aren’t you sending out more ventilators? Cuomo was wrong, Kushner said. He and his team had checked by calling the New York hospitals. No one in New York was 96 hours away from needing a ventilator, Kushner said.

“I’m running a big, big operation,” the president said when I reached him again by phone on Saturday morning, March 28. The country had surpassed 2,000 deaths and officially had more reported cases than any other country. The day before, Trump had signed a $2 trillion pandemic response bill.

Trump announced the 30-day extension on March 29. Fauci said modeling showed the U.S. could be in excess of a million cases and deaths could exceed 100,000 without mitigation efforts.

On April 11, the death toll from the coronavirus in the United States climbed above 20,000. The United States surpassed Italy as the country with the most coronavirus fatalities in the world.

Graham viewed the next two weeks, between mid-April and May 1, as a critical time to make progress against the virus. They’d have to come up with a testing regime that could be built out quickly, he believed, or they were going to lose the whole summer.

When the health experts finally brought their plan to Trump in the Oval Office, Fauci warned against the possibility governors might rush to reopen too quickly.

Governors rushed to restart their states’ economies following the release of the administration’s plan, even though many did not meet the criteria for reopening.

By the end of April, 30 states had reopened or announced plans to reopen within the next week—even though most were showing more new cases or a higher percentage of positive tests than two weeks earlier, and therefore did not meet White House criteria for reopening.

airport screening. “It was difficult to understand how China had aggressive travel restrictions within China, and yet did not move to any travel restrictions” for people who wanted to leave China and go abroad, Redfield said.

McEnany limited Fauci’s television appearances.

One in ten of the requests would be approved so it would not look like Fauci was being completely muzzled.

Fauci gave high marks to Matt Pottinger for realizing China’s deceit.

Fauci thought Pottinger was talking as if the sky was falling and way overstating the case against China. “We got to be more aggressive in trying to control it,” Pottinger told Fauci, “because countries like Singapore and Taiwan have been able to control it by being very aggressive in shutting things down.” Hong Kong had done the same. When the pandemic later exploded, Fauci said, “Wait a minute. Matt was right all along. This thing is really out of control.”

As part of Operation Warp Speed, drug companies were being prepaid billions of dollars to manufacture millions of doses of drugs that might not pass trials or even be used. The design was to ensure the drug companies immediately would have the supply after a new vaccine was approved.

by the election, we will have some of the greatest numbers released by any country. And it’s already happening, Bob. Unless some crazy thing happens.”

“They’ll be employed very soon, Bob. It’s all coming back. They’re going to be employed. Okay—before the plague, they had the best numbers ever. Everybody was doing great. They were getting tremendous increases. They were making more money and people were happy. When the plague came in from China, that was the—then a lot of people lost jobs. Those jobs are all coming back. Black people will all be employed very soon, just like they were before. And the numbers will even be better.”

think,” Kushner continued, “that for five years”—since Trump started to run—“he basically was on offense. And then for four and a half months”—since the virus exploded—“he was on defense. And the goal is to get him back to offense.” The offense soon appeared. First, the White House released a document listing the number of times Fauci had been wrong in his predictions about Covid-19, a highly unusual and, from a health point of view, irresponsible effort to undermine the chief of infectious diseases.