At his town hall tonight, Trump lied to a voter by saying, “Well, I didn’t downplay it. I actually, in many ways, I up-played it, in terms of action.” Not only is Trump on tape saying “I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down,” but he failed to take action early on and it cost tens of thousands of Americans their lives.

WATCH HERE:

Trump has downplayed coronavirus more than 100 times.

Washington Post: “Timeline: the 109 times Trump has downplayed the coronavirus threat”

Trump’s travel restrictions on China and Europe came too late to prevent the virus from spreading and still allowed tens of thousands of travelers to enter the country.

CNN: “Travel bans meant to stop the coronavirus from getting to the US from China and Europe came too late, according to a new analysis of cases from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

New York Times: “Since Chinese officials disclosed the outbreak of a mysterious pneumonialike illness to international health officials on New Year’s Eve, at least 430,000 people have arrived in the United States on direct flights from China, including nearly 40,000 in the two months after President Trump imposed restrictions on such travel, according to an analysis of data collected in both countries.”

Trump wasted nearly two months that could have been used to shore up the nation’s PPE supply before the virus peaked in the spring, and months later many still lack supplies.

Associated Press: “After the first alarms sounded in early January that an outbreak of a novel coronavirus in China might ignite a global pandemic, the Trump administration squandered nearly two months that could have been used to bolster the federal stockpile of critically needed medical supplies and equipment.”

NBC News: “Nearly 100 days after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, health care workers across the country are still facing major shortages of personal protective equipment, or PPE, including crucial equipment such as masks, gowns, gloves and N95 respirators. Amid an alarming rise in coronavirus cases across the United States, the situation is especially dire at hospitals serving communities of color or patients on Medicaid, NBC News has found.”

Trump’s failure to ramp up testing early on blinded the country to the virus’ spread and set the nation’s response back weeks during a crucial period.

Bloomberg: “The CDC has been called to task for its in-house coronavirus tests that initially delivered inconclusive results. Health experts also criticized the agency’s guidance that appeared to limit testing to only the highest-risk patients. These blunders almost certainly set U.S. preparedness back weeks, delaying the identification of additional cases that might have slowed the spread of the disease.”

Vox: “Ever Since the first case of Covid-19 was detected in the US on January 20, the government’s blunders in creating and distributing diagnostic testing have greatly handicapped our response to the growing pandemic.”

If Trump had called for mitigation measures just two weeks earlier in March instead of downplaying the virus, tens of thousands of lives could have been saved.

New York Times: “If the United States had begun imposing social distancing measures one week earlier than it did in March, about 36,000 fewer people would have died in the coronavirus outbreak, according to new estimates from Columbia University disease modelers. And if the country had begun locking down cities and limiting social contact on March 1, two weeks earlier than most people started staying home, the vast majority of the nation’s deaths — about 83 percent — would have been avoided, the researchers estimated. Under that scenario, about 54,000 fewer people would have died by early May.”

Trump continues to mock and flaunt health precautions.

ABC News: “Trump heads into flu season amid pandemic mocking masks, holding packed campaign rallies”