Unless you’re a QAnon devotee, there’s no denying that the pandemic was the nail in the coffin for Donald Trump‘s chances for reelection. From downplaying the severity of the coronavirus to backing Republican states who repeatedly bucked CDC guidelines and reopened too early, which helped cause deadly surges over the holidays, Trump’s bumbling response to the health crisis undoubtedly played a huge factor in his defeat to Joe Biden. But, apparently, things could’ve been much worse.
According to Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History, a new book from reporters Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta, there was a constant internal battle to control Trump’s “worst instincts” as it became clear that the pandemic was coming to U.S. soil. Reportedly, one of those instincts was to ship COVID patients to the Guantanamo Bay prison island to keep America’s case numbers low. Via Washington Post:
In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, as White House officials debated whether to bring infected Americans home for care, President Donald Trump suggested his own plan for where to send them, eager to suppress the numbers on U.S. soil.
“Don’t we have an island that we own?” the president reportedly asked those assembled in the Situation Room in February 2020, before the U.S. outbreak would explode. “What about Guantánamo?”
Considering Guantanamo Bay (a.k.a. Gitmo) has been the site of numerous human rights violations stretching back to the Bush Administration, shipping COVID patients to the island would’ve been a recipe for disaster, not to mention ultimately futile, as the virus was already in America by February at the latest. The Trump Administration also resisted the restriction international travel, which only made matters worse.
(Via Washington Post)