January 22. “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.”
February 2 “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”
February 10 “I think the virus is going to be—it’s going to be fine.”
February 10 “Looks like by April, you know in theory when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”
February 24 “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA… Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
February 25 “CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.”
February 25“I think that's a problem that’s going to go away… They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine.”
February 26 “The 15 (cases in the US) within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.”
February 26 “We're going very substantially down, not up.”
February 26“Well, we're testing everybody that we need to test. And we're finding very little problem. Very little problem.”
February 26 "This is a flu. This is like a flu."
February 27“It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
March 2“A lot of things are happening, a lot of very exciting things are happening and they’re happening very rapidly.”
March 4 “Now, and this is just my hunch, and — but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this. Because a lot people will have this and it's very mild.”
March 5“The United States… has, as of now, only 129 cases… and 11 deaths. We are working very hard to keep these numbers as low as possible!”
March 6“I think we’re doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down… a tremendous job at keeping it down.”
March 6 “You have to be calm. It’ll go away.”
March 6“I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault.”
March 7 “When we get into April, in the warmer weather—that has a very negative effect on that, and that type of a virus.”
March 7 “No, I’m not concerned at all.
March 8 “We have a perfectly coordinated and fine-tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus.”
March 9 During a news conference, White House officials say the U.S. will have tested one million people that week and thereafter would complete 4 million tests per week. By the end of the week, the CDC had only completed a paltry 4,000 tests.
March 10 “Just stay calm. It will go away.”
March 11“It goes away….It’s going away. We want it to go away with very, very few deaths.”
March 12 Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, tells Congress that the country does not have sufficient testing. “The system is not really geared to what we need right now,” he said. “That is a failing. Let’s admit it.”
March 12 "You know, you see what's going on. And so I just wanted that to stop as it pertains to the United States. And that's what we've done. We've stopped it."
March 13 “I don’t take responsibility at all.”
March 13 The Atlantic reported that less than 14,000 tests had been done in the ten weeks since the administration had first been notified of the virus, though Mike Pence had promised the week prior that 1.5 million tests would be available by this time.
March 14 “I’d rate it a ten,” [Trump’s rating of his coronavirus response]
March 15 “Relax”
March 15 “This is a very contagious virus. It’s incredible. But it’s something that we have tremendous control over.”
March 16 “Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment-try getting it yourselves,”
March 17 “The only thing we haven’t done well is get good press.
March 17 “I felt like it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”
March 19 I intended "to always play it down.” [Trump in a private taped interview with Bob Woodward, made public September 9]
March 24 “I'm also hopeful to have Americans working again by that Easter - that beautiful Easter day.”
March 30 "Stay calm, it will go away. You know it -- you know it is going away, and it will go away, and we're going to have a great victory."
March 30“I haven’t heard about testing in weeks. We’re testing more than any other nation in the world. We’ve got these great tests...But I haven’t heard about testing being a problem.”
THIS WASN’T TRUE THEN AND IT’S NOT TRUE TODAY.
March 30 “We inherited a broken test — the whole thing was broken.”
March 31“...it’s not the flu. It’s vicious.”
April 1 “They have to treat us well, also. They can’t say, ‘Oh, gee, we should get this, we should get that.’”
April 2“Massive amounts of medical supplies... are being delivered directly to states...Some have insatiable appetites & are never satisfied (politics?). The complainers should have been stocked up and ready long before this crisis hit.”
April 2“...the Federal Government is merely a back-up for state governments.”
April 3 “I’m feeling good. I just don’t want to be doing -- somehow sitting in the Oval Office behind that beautiful resolute desk, the great resolute desk, I think wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens, I don’t know, somehow I don’t see it for myself. I just don’t. Maybe I’ll change my mind.”
April 5“FEMA, the military — what they’ve done is a miracle...And you should be thanking them for what they’ve done, not always asking wise-guy questions.”
April 6 “LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL!”
April 6 U.S. death toll passes 10,000
April 7"So, you know, things are happening. It's a -- it's -- I haven't seen bad. I've not seen bad."
April 7"You are not going to die from this pill...I really think it's a great thing to try."
April 7“That was a flu. OK. So you could say that I said it was a flu, or you could say the flu is nothing to -- sneeze at," [Regarding Spanish Flu]
April 8"I read about it maybe a day, two days ago,...It was a recommendation that he had, I think he told certain people on the staff, but it didn't matter. I didn't see it." [Regarding Peter Navarro’s January warning]
April 9“I couldn’t have done it any better,” [When asked if his coronavirus response could have been better]
April 11U.S. death toll passes 20,000
April 13 “But I guess I'm doing OK, because, to the best of my knowledge, I'm the President of the United States, despite the things that are said."
April 14 “Enough!” [When a reporter questioned his claim that his authority as president is “total”]
April 14 “[w]hen somebody’s the president of the United States, the authority is total.”
April 15 U.S. death toll passes 30,000
April 15 As Trump focuses on reopening, a leaked CDC and FEMA report warns of “significant risk of resurgence of the virus” with phased reopening.
April 19 “Now we’re going toward 50, I’m hearing, or 60,000 people [dead from the coronavirus]”
April 22 “If [coronavirus] comes back though, it won’t be coming back in the form that it was, it will be coming back in smaller doses that we can contain….it’s also possible it doesn’t come back at all.”
April 23"I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? As you see, it gets in the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that."
April 23 “So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether its ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said, that hasn't been checked but you're gonna test it. And then I said, supposing it brought the light inside the body, which you can either do either through the skin or some other way…”
April 23 “You see states are starting to open up now, and it’s very exciting to see,”
April 24 U.S. death toll passes 50,000
April 27"I can't imagine why," [Regarding influx in poison control calls about disinfectant]
April 29 “It’s gonna go away, this is going to go away.”
May 3 “Look, we're going to lose anywhere from 75,000, 80,000 to 100,000 people,”
May 5 U.S. death toll passes 70,000
May 5 “There’ll be more death, that the virus will pass, with or without a vaccine. And I think we’re doing very well on the vaccines but, with or without a vaccine, it’s going to pass, and we’re going to be back to normal,”
May 8 This is going to go away without a vaccine. It is going to go away. We are not going to see it again.”
May 9 “This is going to go away without a vaccine.”
May 11“Coronavirus numbers are looking MUCH better, going down almost everywhere. Big progress being made!”
May 11 “We have met the moment and we have prevailed,”
May 14 “Could be that testing’s, frankly, overrated. Maybe it is overrated.”
May 15“Vaccine or no vaccine, we’re back. And we’re starting the process. In many cases, they don’t have vaccines and a virus or a flu comes and you fight through it.
May 16“We’ve done a GREAT job on Covid response, making all Governors look good, some fantastic (and that’s OK), but the Lamestream Media doesn’t want to go with that narrative, and the Do Nothing Dems talking point is to say only bad about “Trump”. I made everybody look good, but me!”
May 18 U.S. death toll passes 90,000
May 19 “When we have a lot of cases, I don't look at that as a bad thing, I look at that as, in a certain respect, as being a good thing,...Because it means our testing is much better. I view it as a badge of honor, really, it's a badge of honor.”
May 27 U.S. death toll passes 100,000
May 29 “We will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization”
June 6 U.S death toll passes 110,000
June 15“At some point this stuff goes away and it’s going away.”
June 17 “It’s fading away. It’s going to fade away.”
June 18 “And it is dying out. The numbers are starting to get very good.”
June 20 "Testing is a double-edged sword,...When you do testing to that extent, you're going to find more people, you're going to find more cases, so I said to my people, 'Slow the testing down, please.'"
June 22 U.S death toll passes 120,000
June 23 “Cases are going up in the U.S. because we are testing far more than any other country, and ever expanding. With smaller testing we would show fewer cases!”
June 23 "It's going away,"
June 25 “Coronavirus deaths are way down. Mortality rate is one of the lowest in the World. Our Economy is roaring back and will NOT be shut down. “Embers” or flare ups will be put out, as necessary!”
June 30 U.S. has just 4% of the global population, but 25% of global coronavirus cases and the second highest death rate per capita.
July 1 “I think we’re going to be very good with the coronavirus.” “I think that, at some point, that’s going to sort of disappear, I hope.”
July 6 U.S. death toll passes 130,000
July 7 "I think we are in a good place."
July 7 The president predicted that in the next two to four weeks, "I think we're going to be in very good shape."
July 8 “I disagree with @CDCgov on their very tough & expensive guidelines for opening schools. While they want them open, they are asking school [sic] to do very impractical things. I will be meeting with them!!!”
July 18 U.S. death toll passes 140,000
July 19 “I think we have one of the lowest mortality rates in the world”
July 19 “Many of those cases are young people that would heal in a day”
“They have the sniffles, and we put it down as a test”
July 21"You will never hear this on the Fake News concerning the China Virus, but by comparison to most other countries, who are suffering greatly, we are doing very well - and we have done things that few other countries could have done!”
July 27"America will develop a vaccine very soon, and we will defeat the virus. We will have it delivered in record time."
July 28 U.S. death toll passes 150,000
July 28 "He's got this high approval rating. So why don't I have a high approval rating with respect -- and the administration -- with respect to the virus?" (Trump referring to Anthony Fauci)
August 3 "I think we are doing very well and I think ... as well as any nation,"
August 3"They are dying. That's true. And you — it is what it is.”
August 3 “Right now I think it’s under control.”
August 3 “You know, there are those that say you can test too much, you do know that.”
August 4"...we have among the lowest numbers." - White House Press Briefing
August 5 “If you look at children, children are almost - and I would almost say definitely - but almost immune from this disease.”
August 5“It will go away like things go away”
August 6 U.S. death toll passes 160,000
August 12 U.S. reports highest number of COVID-19 deaths in one day since mid-May
August 16 U.S. death toll passes 170,000
August 22 “Many doctors and studies disagree with this!” (Donald Trump in a quote tweet of a Twitter moment stating that the FDA is revoking hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine for COVID-19 treatment, as they are “unlikely to be effective”)
August 26 U.S. death toll passes 180,000
August 31"We've done a great job in Covid but we don't get the credit."
August 31 Six million Americans have now been infected by the coronavirus.
September 4 There will be a vaccine “before the end of the year and maybe even before Nov. 1. I think we can probably have it sometime in October.”
September 9 U.S. death toll passes 190,000
September 10 “I really do believe that we are rounding the corner. The vaccines are right there”
September 10“We've possibly done the best job”
September 10 “We have rounded the final turn”
September 10 “I think that we've probably done the best job of any country”
September 14 Trump, was asked if he is afraid of Coronavirus risk at his rallies: “I’m on a stage, it’s very far away, so I’m not at all concerned.”
September 16“If you take the blue states out, we’re at a level I don’t think anybody in the world would be at.”
September 16 Reporter: “[The head of the CDC] said that the vaccine for the general public wouldn’t be available until next Summer or maybe even early fall. Are you comfortable with that timeline?” Trump: “I think he made a mistake when he said that. That’s just incorrect information.”
September 19 U.S. death toll passes 200,000
September 21 “Take your hat off to the young because they have a hell of an immune system. But [the virus] affects virtually nobody. It’s an amazing thing. By the way, open your schools everybody, open your schools.”
September 21 "We're rounding the corner," "With or without a vaccine. They hate when I say that but that's the way it is. ... We've done a phenomenal job. Not just a good job, a phenomenal job. Other than public relations, but that's because I have fake news. On public relations, I give myself a D. On the job itself, we take an A+."
September 23 "I think we’re rounding the turn very much."
September 28 "And I say, and I’ll say it all the time: We’re rounding the corner. And, very importantly, vaccines are coming, but we’re rounding the corner regardless. But vaccines are coming, and they’re coming fast. "
September 29"Well, so far we have had no problem whatsoever. " (referring to crowds of thousands at rallies)
"I don’t wear a mask like him. Every time you see him, he’s got a mask. He could be speaking 200 feet away from him and he shows up with the biggest mask I’ve ever seen."
October 2 Trump and First Lady test positive for Coronavirus
October 5U.S. death toll passes 210,000
October 5 “Don’t be afraid of Covid.”
