FACT CHECK: Trump says ‘nobody’ knew pandemic was coming. His adviser warned of it in January.
President Donald Trump said repeatedly in March that “nobody” could’ve predicted a crisis at the scale of the coronavirus pandemic wreaking havoc across the globe.
In a Jan. 29 memo about the coronavirus addressed to the National Security Council, Peter Navarro, President Trump’s trade adviser, warned that the “risk of a worst-case pandemic scenario should not be overlooked,” the Times reported. The disease could kill up to half a million Americans, Navarro warned in the document, and cost the U.S. trillions of dollars if no action was taken to contain the virus.
Story continuesThe paper said Monday that Navarro’s January memo was “the highest-level alert known to have circulated inside the West Wing as the administration was taking its first substantive steps to confront” the coronavirus crisis. Navarro called for Congress to approve emergency funds of at least $3 billion for prevention and treatment efforts.Navarro's Feb. 23 memo was unsigned and distributed through the NSC. It began:"There is an increasing probability of a full-blown COVID-19 pandemic that could infect as many as 100 million Americans, with a loss of life of as many as 1-2 million souls." https://t.
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