President Donald Trump insists the COVID-19 pandemic caught everybody by surprise. In fact, he ignored multiple warnings from many quarters, making the U.S. outbreak more deadly. Here’s a timeline in chronological order, updated regularly:
January 2017: Days before Trump’s Inauguration, members of his administration are briefed by outgoing Obama Administration officials on the need to prepare for a pandemic. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross reportedly dozes off, others grouse about having to attend.
May 2018: Trump disbands the White House agency charged with planning for a pandemic and reassigns its top official. “In a world of limited resources, you have to pick and choose,” says one Trump team member.
January to August 2019: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services conducts a training exercise for a hypothetical respiratory virus that begins in China and spreads rapidly to the United States. A draft report identified multiple failings in the government’s ability to respond.
January 10, 2020: Former Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert, ousted by President Donald Trump in 2018, warns in a tweet: “We face a global health threat,” imploring the nation to “Coordinate!”
January 11: Chinese scientists post the genome of the new coronavirus, and within a week German virologists produce the first diagnostic test for the disease.
January 18: Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar briefs Trump in a phone call on the potential seriousness of COVID-19.
January 22: Asked at a press conference if he is worried about a pandemic, Trump replies, “No. Not at all. And we have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control.”
January 27: White House aides meet with then-acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney “trying to get senior officials to pay more attention to the virus,” according to The Washington Post.
January 29: White House Economic Adviser Peter Navarro warns that COVID-19 could take more than half a million American lives and cause nearly $6 trillion in economic damage.
January 30: Azar speaks directly to Trump about a possible pandemic. Trump calls him an alarmist. That same day, the World Health Organization declares COVID-19 a global health emergency.
Late January to early February 2020: U.S. intelligence officials emphatically warn Trump at his daily briefings about the developing pandemic. “The system was blinking red,” one official told The Washington Post. “They just couldn’t get him to do anything about it.”
February 2: Trump tells Fox News host Sean Hannity, “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”
February 23: Navarro sends another memo, this one directly to Trump, warning that COVID-19 could kill as many as two million Americans.
February 25: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tells reporters it expects COVID-19 to spread across the country, causing “severe” disruption. Trump is angered by this announcement, saying it alarmed people unnecessarily and caused the stock market to drop.
Late February: The United States refuses to join more than sixty nations in accepting diagnostic test supplies from the World Health Organization, saying it wants to develop its own test.
February 27: Trump assures the nation the virus will “like a miracle . . . disappear.” The next day, he tells supporters at a rally in South Carolina, “Now, the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus . . . . This is their new hoax.”
March 4: In a Fox News appearance, Trump blames testing delays on Barack Obama, who left office more than three years before, and disputes the World Health Organization’s death rate findings by minimizing them in favor of “my hunch” that it is lower.
March 6: Trump proudly declares, “Anybody that wants a test can get a test.” That same day, he calls the pandemic “an unforeseen problem” that “came out of nowhere.”
March 13: Trump blames his predecessor, who left office more than three years before, for testing delays, saying “I don’t take responsibility at all.”
March 19: Trump says the outbreak “is something that just surprised the whole world. And if people would have known about it, it could have stopped—been stopped in place.”
March 27: Trump for the first time invokes the Defense Production Act to order General Motors to begin manufacturing ventilators, work that was already underway.
April 5: Trump, in his press briefing, calls the outbreak “something that nobody could have ever projected.”
April 7: Trump at his press briefing, claims of the pandemic, “Nobody thought it was going to happen.”
April 11: The United States passes all other nations in the number of COVID-19 deaths, including China and India, both of which have populations more than four times as large. There are now 492,416 confirmed U.S. cases, up from 937 exactly one month before.
April 12: Navarro, in an appearance on 60 Minutes, challenges the program to find any segment it aired during the Bush or Obama Administrations that said, “Hey, global pandemic’s coming.” The show points out that it aired such stories in 2005 and 2009, including Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health warning that “we would not be prepared for that.”
April 13: Trump falsely asserts it will be entirely his decision, not that of governors, when “to open up the states.”
April 14: Trump, in a fundraising appeal, urges his supporters to “stand with him and hold China accountable for their lies and deceptions during the Coronavirus pandemic”—by sending him money.
April 17: Trump urges citizens in several states with Democratic governors to rebel against the health advice being offered by his own administration and demand an end to protective measures meant to staunch the spread of COVID-19.
April 20: Trump declares at his daily briefing, “People are amazed at how early I acted.” He predicts between 50,000 and 60,000 total COVID-19 deaths, saying this would be a triumph.
April 23: Trump suggests at his daily briefing that one way for people to battle COVID-19 is by injecting themselves with disinfectants like bleach.
April 27: As the number of U.S. deaths nears his upper prediction of 60,000, Trump tosses out a new number: 70,000. “I think we’ve done a great job,” he says.
April 29: Trump asserts that Anericans will soon be having “some massive rallies and people will be sitting next to each other.”
May 3: As the number of U.S. deaths nears 70,000, Trump revises his upward estimate to 90,000.
May 5: Trump announces his plan to disband his coronavirus task force.
May 6: Trump changes mind, says he wants task force to continue “indefinitely.”
May 8: Contradicting his own experts, Trump announces that the coronavirus “is going to go away without a vaccine.” He doesn’t say when.
May 14: Trump identifies a solution to the crisis: “If we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases.”
May 17: Health Secretary Azar winks at yahoos across the country crowding into bars: “I think in any individual instance you're going to see people doing things that are irresponsible. That’s part of the freedom that we have here in America.”
May 19: Trump defends his decision to take hydroxychloroquine, calling a study produced by his own government that found the anti-malarial drug did more harm than good “a Trump enemy statement.”
May 20: The United States has now recorded about 95,000 COVID-19 deaths, more than twice as many as any other nation.
May 22: The medical journal Lancet publishes a study of Trump's suggested use of anti-malarial drugs on 96,000 hospitalized COVID-19 patients on six continents. For those given hydroxychloroquine, there was a 34 percent increase in risk of mortality and a 137 percent increased risk of a serious heart arrhythmia.
May 25: Trump threatens to pull the planned late-August Republican National Convention from North Carolina if state officials don't agree to the spectacularly reckless act of allowing the event to be "fully occupied."
May 26: Trump mocks Vice President Joe Biden and a reporter at a press conference for wearing masks in public, as his own health officials recommend.
May 27: Four months after the United States records it's first known case of COVID-19, the death toll for Americans tops 100,000. Trump complains in a tweet: The Radical Left Lamestream Media, together with their partner, the Do Nothing Democrats, are trying to spread a new narrative that President Trump was slow in reacting to Covid 19. Wrong, I was very fast . . . !"
May 29: Trump announces that the United States will withdraw from the World Health Organization, saying the organization has failed to hold China accountable for the spread of COVID-19.
June 2: Trump declares, over Twitter, that he is seeking a new venue for the Republican National Convention. originally to be held in Charlotte, North Carolina, because the state has refused to guarantee that the event can be held without COVID-19 restrictions like facial masks and social distancing.
June 8: Trump, not having held any rallies since March, announces his plans to restart them in the next two weeks. "His campaign manager, Brad Parscale says, “You’ll again see the kind of crowds and enthusiasm that sleepy Joe Biden can only dream of.”
June 11: Regeneron Pharmaceuticals begins the first U.S. human clinical trials of a COVID-19 antibody cocktail.
June 15: The federal Food and Drug Administration withdraws emergency approval for hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug Trump lauded as treatment for COVID-19. The FDA says such medications are "likely to be ineffective."
June 16: Vice President Pence says fears of COVID-19 are "overblown" as nine states hit new single-day highs or set records for seven-day new coronavirus case averages.
June 20: Trump holds a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, despite warnings from health officials about the risk of spreading COVID-19. On the day of the rally, six of Trump's own campaign staff test positive for the virus; two more cases are subsequently confirmed among staff who worked the event.
June 21: The World Health Organization reports the largest single-day increase in cases of COVID-19, with more than 183,000 new cases in twenty-four hours.
June 22: Twenty-nine states report a jump in COVID-19 cases, with some breaking daily records. Many new outbreaks occured in Georgia, Texas, and Florida, states that were among the earliest to reopen.
June 23: Trump doubles down on claims he made at his Tulsa rally that he asked officials to slow down testing for COVID-19. This came after White House officials tried to explain away his comments as being made “in jest.”
June 24: New York, a former hub of COVID-19 that saw downturns in cases after strict quarantine rules, imposes a mandatory two-week quarantine on travelers from states with high rates of the disease.
June 26: Dr. Peter Hoetz, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine, slams Vice President Mike Pence for saying the United States is doing a good job of containing COVID-19 except for "a couple of hotspots." Hoetz says: “These are not ‘hotspots’—these are the largest metropolitan areas in the United States.”
June 29: The United States surpasses 2.5 million cases of COVID-19.
June 30: The European Union announces that it is opening its borders to fourteen countries, not including the United States because of its failure to contain COVID-19. Dr. Anthony Fauci, a leading health official, says he “would not be surprised” if the U.S. daily total of new cases more than doubles to 100,000 cases per day.
July 6: Trump tweets that in the United States now has the world's lowest COVID-19 mortality rate. According to data from Johns Hopkins University, it actually has the sixth-highest death rate, at 4.5%.
July 7: Five weeks after threatening to do so, Trump announces that the United States is formally withdrawing from the World Health Organization. This comes on the same day the nation hits three million cases of coronavirus.
July 8: Trump denounces the CDC's guidelines for reopening schools, including masks, hygiene, and staggered scheduling, calling them "impractical." This comes after he said Democrats "think it’s going to be good for them politically, so they keep the schools closed."
July 18: The Trump Administration pushes to zero out recommendations from Republicans providing COVID-19-related funding. Senate Republicans had drafted a proposal that included $25 billion in grants to states for testing and contact tracing, and another $25 million to federal health agencies.
July 20: In an interview with Fox News, Trump says many COVID-19 cases are young people who "have the sniffles." On this same day, the official U.S. death toll from COVID-19 passes 140,000.
July 21: Trump, at a White House briefing, says the coronavirus "will probably unfortunately get worse before it gets better." On the same day, the CDC releases data suggesting the number of people infected is anywhere between two and twenty-four times the number of reported cases, depending on region.
July 29: On the same day that the U.S. COVID-19 death toll suprasses 150,000, Trump praises Dr. Stella Immanuel, who like him believes in the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in treating coronavirus patients. Immanuel is also notorious for some of her other beliefs, including witchcraft and that gynecological problems are caused by having sex with demons in your dreams.
August 3: Trump, asked by Jonathan Swan of Axios about the fact that "a thousand Americans are dying a day, responds: "They are dying. That's true. And you—it is what it is."
August 4: After Dr. Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus task force coordinator, says the pandemic is "extraordinarily widespread" across the country, Trump rebukes her on Twitter, blaming her negative outlook on "Crazy Nancy Pelosi"—despite CDC data showing almost 50,000 new cases a day.
August 5: “It’s going away. It’ll go away. Things go away. No question in my mind that it will go away,” Trump says regarding COVID-19 during a White House press briefing. This comes days after Dr Fauci told the House Select Subcommittee that he did not believe the coronavirus would ever completely go away given its contagious nature.
August 5: Twitter temporarily blocks the Trump election campaign account from tweeting until it removes a post with a video clip from a Fox News interview, where Trump falsely claims that children are "almost immune from this disease." Facebook also removes a post containing the same video from Trump's personal page.
August 9: The United States hits five million cases of COVID-19, by far the highest number in the world.
August 22: President Trump tweets that “The deep state, or whoever, over at the FDA is making it very difficult for drug companies to get people in order to test the vaccines and therapeutics. Obviously, they are hoping to delay the answer until after November 3rd."
August 23: Trump announces FDA authorization of the emergency use of convalescent plasma therapy, an unproven treatment, for COVID-19 patients. Scientists react with alarm, with one saying "if you end up hospitalized, your doctor won't know if plasma is helpful or not. That's why we do science."
August 25: FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn apologizes for claiming a treatment the agency had just authorized for the coronavirus would save thirty-five lives out of every 100 people who received it. After receiving backlash from scientists across the nation, who tagged the statistic in question as deeply misleading, Hahn tweeted that "The criticism is entirely justified."
September 2: Trump goes maskless as he surveys the damage done during protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin. At a roundtable meeting during the trip, Trump says those in attendance can take off their face masks "if you feel more comfortable" doing so.
September 4: According to a forecast from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, the global death toll from the coronavirus pandemic could triple by the end of 2020, with a fall wave of infections potentially propelling fatalities in the United States to 410,000.
September 11: Politico reports that Trump-appointed health aides demanded and received the right to review CDC reports charting the progress of COVID-19, which have contradicted Trump's optimistic messages about the pandemic."CDC to me appears to be writing hit pieces on the administration," one appointee complained.
September 14: Health and Human Services spokesperson Michael Caputo accuses scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of gathering a "resistance unit" for "sedition" against President Trump.
September 16: After Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the director of the CDC, tells a Senate committee that a vaccine won't be widely available until the middle of 2021, Trump says, “I think he made a mistake when he said that" and “It’s just incorrect information.”
September 17: Newly revealed documents show USPS had planned to send 650 million masks to American households for free, even drafting a press release. But the plan was scrapped.
September 21: The CDC website is edited to remove notes suggesting that COVID-19 can spread through airborne transmission. The agency claims the language had been posted in error, but former FDA chief Dr Scott Gottlieb told CNBC that “It’s really hard to believe that this was an accidental posting."
September 22: The U.S. hits 200,000 coronavirus deaths.
September 30: Researchers at Cornell University who analyzed thirty-eight million articles about the pandemic in media around the world found Trump to be the single largest driver of spreading coronavirus misinformation.
October 2: Trump announces that he and First Lady Melania have tested positive for COVID-19, just hours after it became known that advisor Hope Hicks had done so. The previous afternoon, Trump attended a fundraising rally in New Jersey, potentially putting his own supporters at risk.
Oct 5: After Senator Kamala Harris requests a plexiglass barrier at the vice presidential debate withMike Pence, the Vice President's spokesperson Katie Miller said "If Senator Harris wants to use a fortress around herself, have at it." Miller tested positive for the virus in May. Also, President Trump urges Americans, none of whom have access to health care comparable to his, to “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life." On returning from the hospital and still highly contagious, Trump rips off his face mask before entering the White House.
Oct 6: Stephen Miller, Trump’s top speechwriter, tests positive for the coronavirus. This brings the total number of cases in the White House outbreak to thirty-four.
October 13: Two anonymous senior White House administration officials cite the Great Barrington Declaration petition, which supports herd immunity, the idea that the best way to fight COVID-19 is to have lots of people contract it. Health experts, The New York Times reports, "have concluded that about 85 to 90 percent of the American population is still susceptible to the coronavirus."
October 16: The White House appoints two political operatives, Nina Witkofsky and Chester Moeller, to the CDC to try to control the information it releases about the pandemic. Neither has any public health background.
October 19: “People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots,” President Trump says during a campaign stop. He later calls Dr. Fauci a "disaster." Also, Twitter removes a tweet by Scott Atlas, a Trump favorite health advisor, that declares: "Masks work? NO." Twitter says this violated its policy on coronavirus misinformation.
October 20: The United States' seven-day average of new daily cases moves above 58,300, levels of COVID-19 not seen since the first week of August. Average daily new cases have also increased 70 percent since September 12, when the country was at a two-month low of about 34,300.
October 25: White House chief of staff Mark Meadows says "we are not going to control the pandemic" because "it is a contagious virus just like the flu."
October 28: The rolling seven-day average of daily COVID-19 cases tops 70,000, shattering previous records. More than 8.7 million cases have been confirmed nationwide since February.
October 29: In a Fox News interview, Donald Trump Jr. says deaths from COVID-19 have dropped to "almost nothing." That day, 1,004 people in the U.S. died from the virus.
October 31: A Stanford University study estimates that eighteen of Trump's reelection rallies/superspreader events have led to an additional 30,000 additional cases and 700 additional deaths.
November 2: Speaking at a campaign rally in Florida, Trump responds to a crowd's chants of "Fire Fauci": "Don’t tell anybody but let me wait until a little bit after the election." Trump cannot directly fire Fauci, but can pressure his boss to do so.
November 4: The United States hits 104,004 new coronavirus cases in one day, an all-time high.
November 4: Mark Meadows, Trump's Chief of Staff, tests positive for the coronavirus.
November 9: The United States hits ten million cases of coronavirus. Also, CNN reports that almost 20 percent of coronavirus patients get a psychiatric diagnosis within ninety days, mainly for depression or anxiety.
November 11: At least fourteen Trump aides and advisors are infected in a new White House outbreak, including Trump’s political director and housing secretary. They had all attended an Election Night party where hundreds of maskless people gathered.
November 12: The United States reported more than 153,000 new coronavirus cases, the seventh time in nine days that reported U.S. infections broke records.
November 17: Politico reports that, for the first time in fifty years, an outgoing presidential administration is stonewalling an incoming one. Trump's team has denied
Biden's team any COVID-19 briefings, federal agencies haven't briefed Biden's teams in general, and no security clearances have been done for Biden staffers.
November 18: The United States surpasses 250,000 deaths due to COVID-19.