NEW YORK — If a lie illuminates Times Square, can it blind the truth?
Hate Trump, Inc. has sponsored a billboard in the heart of Manhattan’s Theater District. Right where the neon lights are bright, on Broadway, this display is called Trump Death Clock. Much like the National Debt Clock, this giant sign showcases the rising number of “estimated U.S. COVID-19 deaths due to POTUS inaction.” Of course, as the Left regards every tragedy, these fatalities are Trump’s fault.
This sign is so dishonest, it would detonate a polygraph machine.
Why have so many — too many — succumbed to the Wuhan virus since it escaped Communist China and landed here? As Trump Death Clock explains: “The President declined to act until March 16th.”
This is a titanium-solid, 1,000-watt, L-I-E lie.
Whatever one thinks of President Donald J. Trump’s response to the COVID crisis, the notion that he snored through it or just staged rallies until March 16 is as untrue as accusing Pope Francis of founding ISIS.
Here are the straightforward, unvarnished facts about President Trump’s COVID-related acts before March 16.
•January 6: President Trump’s Centers for Disease Control issued a travel notice concerning Wuhan, China, before any U.S. infection had been detected.
•January 7: CDC launched its Coronavirus Incident Management System.
•January 17: Even before the first U.S. infection, CDC began enhanced screenings for COVID-19 symptoms at three U.S. airports: SFO, LAX, and JFK.
•January 20: CDC opened an emergency operations center after just one U.S. COVID-19 patient was diagnosed.
•January 21: CDC expanded COVID-19 checks to airports in Chicago and Atlanta.
•January 23: The State Department orders all non-essential U.S. personnel and their family members to evacuate Wuhan.
•January 27: Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar led the first daily meeting of the President’s Coronavirus Task Force (PCTF).
•January 29: President Trump chaired PCTF and then identified its members. Among them: Azar, National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield, and the National Institutes of Health’s renowned and respected Dr. Anthony Fauci.
•January 31: One day after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern,” President Trump restricted travel from China. Former Vice President Joe Biden denounced this as “hysterical xenophobia.” Senate Democrat leader Chuck Schumer of New York called this policy “just an excuse to further his [Trump’s] ongoing war against immigrants.” CDC began America’s first mandatory quarantines since the 1960s. Azar declared “a public health emergency in the United States.”
•February 2: CDC added Honolulu, Seattle, and suburban Washington, D.C.’s Dulles airports to those already screening travelers from China.
•February 4: The Food and Drug Administration allowed emergency use of CDC’s COVID-19 test in non-CDC labs. “My administration will take all necessary steps to safeguard our citizens from” COVID-19, Trump said in his State of the Union address.
•February 5: Trump’s then-acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and Secretary Azar briefed lawmakers on COVID-19. “Several House lawmakers of both major parties said the administration has the situation under control,” the Seattle Times reported.
•February 9: PCTF briefed state-level chief executives at the National Governors Association Meeting.
•February 11: HHS expanded collaboration with Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Research & Development division to produce a COVID-19 vaccine.
•February 18: HHS offered expertise and funds to help Sanofi Pasteur develop a COVID-19 vaccine and treatments.
•February 22-24: CDC discouraged travel to and from Iran, Italy, Japan, and South Korea. The President asked Congress for $1.25 billion in initial COVID-19 response funds.
•February 26: President Trump directed Vice President Mike Pence to lead the administration’s COVID-19 response.
•February 27: The president names Dr. Deborah Birx as White House COVID-19 response coordinator.
•February 29: FDA approved LabCorp, Quest, and other diagnosticians to develop COVID-19 tests and liberated states to engage some 2,000 such laboratories. The Trump Administration discouraged travel to parts of South Korea and Italy and restricted arrivals from Iran.
•March 2: The president urged top pharmaceutical-industry executives to assist the fight against the virus.
•March 3: President Trump thanked and energized staffers at the National Institutes of Health’s Vaccine Research Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
•March 4: President Trump met with health-insurance executives. They agreed to test patients for COVID-19 for free. PCTF encouraged nursing homes to limit family visits, to shield at-risk seniors from the Wuhan virus.
•March 6: President Trump signed $8.3 billion in COVID-19 response funds approved by the House (415-2) on March 4 and the Senate (96-1) on March 5.
•March 11: President Trump limited arrivals from Europe, which already had suffered badly from this disease.
•March 13: President Trump proclaimed a national emergency, unleashed $42 billion for immediate aid, suspended student-loan interest payments; deregulated telemedicine, interstate medical practice, and the hiring of physicians at hospitals; and persuaded Costco, Walmart, and other retailers to launch drive-thru COVID-19 tests. FDA allowed Roche and Thermo Fisher to produce COVID-19 tests.
•March 14: The president restricted arrivals from the United Kingdom and Ireland.
•March 15: President Trump huddled with grocers, who pledged to stay open throughout the crisis.
And what happened on the day that all of this supposed “POTUS inaction” finally stopped?
•March 16: Phase 1 clinical trials began on the first COVID-19 vaccine candidate, just 64 days after China isolated its genome on January 12. “This is record time for the development of a vaccine,” said FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, resulting from “an impressive public/private partnership.” The president unveiled his “Fifteen Days to Slow the Spread” guidance and urged the American people to follow it.
Hate Trump, Inc.’s filthy lies, promoted by filthy people, deserve to be refuted — immediately, constantly, and more brightly.
Times Square, and other high-profile U.S. locations, should be equipped right away with billboards, each branded President Trump’s COVID-19 Response Dashboard. Every one of these should feature a running tally of all the corona-crushing resources that Team Trump has ordered, organized, and deployed. These should include one or more tickers that illustrate and update the increasing deliveries of these and other related items:
•Two hospital ships
•28 pop-up hospitals
•155 Airbridge supply flights
•13,718 ventilators
•15,800 temporary hospital beds
•3.9 million coveralls
•11.2 million COVID-19 tests performed
•12 million face shields
•25.2 million surgical gowns
•83.8 million N95 respirators
•133.7 million surgical masks
•989.4 million gloves
This should be, essentially, a moving, changing, constantly refreshing report on the items below, with similar, simple illustrations.
The Trump Administration should install these billboards across America. If not, the president’s supporters should seize the day and make this happen.
The Left barely has time to breathe as it relentlessly trashes the president and blames him for the devastation wrought by a pathogen that he neither invented nor invited here, and which he and his administration have battled since January 6.
The Left/media/Democrat lie factory cannot be stopped. But it can and should be bombed. To be precise: Bombed with facts.
Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor, a contributing editor with National Review Online, and a senior fellow with the London Center for Policy Research.
