36 million Americans have filed for unemployment. On Fox Business this morning, Trump passed the buck, saying, “nobody blames me” for these numbers. 

First off, we do blame him. Trump’s failure to act early on severely exacerbated this crisis and significantly worsened its impact on the economy.

TRUMP: ‘NOBODY BLAMES ME’

FAILED TO ACT: Trump’s intelligence officials warned about the threat of coronavirus in November and briefed him at the beginning of January. Trump had ample lead time before coronavirus reached the United States, but he failed to prepare or assemble a coherent response.

ABC News: “As far back as late November, U.S. intelligence officials were warning that a contagion was sweeping through China’s Wuhan region, changing the patterns of life and business and posing a threat to the population, according to four sources briefed on the secret reporting. Concerns about what is now known to be the novel coronavirus pandemic were detailed in a November intelligence report by the military’s National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI), according to two officials familiar with the document’s contents.”

CNN: “That day came on January 3, the first day the President’s daily briefing included information the US intelligence community had gathered about the contagion in China and the potential it had to spread, including to the US, according to a person briefed on the matter.”

Washington Post Fact Checker: “The president spent nearly two months issuing confusing and contradictory signals — leaving the bureaucratic machine of the U.S. government to chart the course for the coronavirus response …  The missteps that went unmanaged were ignored by leaders at the highest level of government and allowed cases to go undetected, contributing to the spike in the virus’s spread.”

FAILED TO TEST: Trump ignored warnings and failed to ramp up testing. As a result, the U.S. still lags behind other countries in per capita testing, despite Trump’s claims that “we have prevailed” on testing.

NPR: “Despite warnings about supply shortages by health experts and governors at least as early as February, the federal government took until late April to ramp up domestic production of swabs — a universal ingredient in the most common type of COVID-19 test.” 

Associated Press: “The U.S. has tested far fewer people than all other countries combined. It also lags dozens of countries in testing its population proportionally… The total number of tests performed country to country is a poor measure of success because populations obviously differ hugely. On a more telling measure — the proportion of a country’s population that gets tested — the U.S. was not only late getting started but is still way behind.”

USA Today: “The U.S. still trails many nations in per capita testing, including Australia, Italy, Russia, Canada, Denmark, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and Iceland.”

FAILED TO SECURE SUPPLIES: Trump ignored early warnings that hospitals lacked sufficient supplies. His failed response contributed to shortages across the country, and now instead of addressing these shortages he is pretending they don’t exist.

Politico: “Seven days before Donald Trump took office … The Trump team was told it could face specific challenges, such as shortages of ventilators, anti-viral drugs and other medical essentials, and that having a coordinated, unified national response was ‘paramount’ — warnings that seem eerily prescient given the ongoing coronavirus crisis.”

CNN: “President Donald Trump contradicted a nurse he was honoring in the Oval Office on Wednesday, insisting there are no personal protective equipment shortages in the US despite her account that availability could be ‘sporadic.’”

DOWNPLAYS CRISIS: Instead of doing more to fight the virus, Trump continues to downplay the virus and is declaring victory as infection rates continue to rise in dozens of states and new hotspots emerge.

The Daily Beast: “Team Trump Pushes CDC to Revise Down Its COVID Death Counts”

NBC News: “Trump’s claim that cases are falling everywhere is contradicted by his own task force’s report, obtained by NBC News, showing the virus spreading far from the coasts.”

NBC News Fact Check: “President Donald Trump falsely claimed Monday that the coronavirus is abating in the U.S., despite data showing that the virus is on the rise in some states and a lack of testing leaves experts unsure about infection rates elsewhere.”