According to a report by the Washington Post, former US President Donald Trump contemplated sending covid-positive American tourists to Guantanamo Bay Island.
According to the report, before the coronavirus crisis erupted in the United States, a conference was conducted in February 2020 in the White House Situation Room to discuss whether US individuals who had been to coronavirus-affected nations should be allowed to return and get treatment.
The president is said to have questioned White House staff, “Don’t we have an island that we own?”
Trump said, “We import stuff.” “We are not going to import a virus”
When the idea was brought up again, his advisers were stunned and immediately dismissed it, fearful of the reaction that would result from isolating Americans on the same base as terrorist suspects.
In a book titled “Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History,” Washington Post writers Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta offer such insights, among others, into Trump’s early handling of the crisis.
“The book offers new insights about Trump as the president careened between embracing miracle coronavirus cures in his quest for good news, grappling with his own illness — which was far more serious than officials acknowledged — and fretting about the outbreak’s implications for his reelection bid,” reads the publication’s report.
One such instance included Trump allegedly berating then-Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar over coronavirus testing in a phone conversation.
“Testing is killing me!” Trump reportedly shouted, loud enough that Azar’s aide’s heard. “I’m going to lose the election because of testing! What idiot had the federal government do testing?”
“Do you mean Jared?” asked the speaker. Jared Kushner, the president’s top advisor, and son-in-law was mentioned by Azar.
Kushner had promised to head a national testing plan and recruit the assistance of the business sector only five days before, according to the Washington Post, Abutaleb and Paletta write in their book.
Trump claimed that the US government should never have been engaged in testing, and questioned why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was even interested in tracking illnesses.
“This was gross incompetence to let CDC develop a test,” Trump reportedly said.
According to the Washington Post, scientists think that insufficient testing contributed to the virus’s spread throughout the nation in early 2020, making all contact tracing and isolation measures virtually difficult, resulting in the first wave of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths.
