Sen. Ted Cruz released a video that reframes the current political conversation of who downplayed the novel coronavirus during its early stages.
The Texas Republican released a video Tuesday addressing claims from Democrats that President Trump downplayed the coronavirus, outlining when the first cases were reported in Wuhan, China, the understood origin of the pandemic, and the actions of Trump and Congress.
Over one week after the first case of COVID-19 was reported in Wuhan, the video notes the Democratic House majority voted to impeach Trump for obstruction of Congress and abuse of power. Approximately one month later, Chinese authorities began to punish physicians seeking to warn other countries about the outbreak.
The first confirmed case of the coronavirus in the United States was reported in Washington state on Jan. 21, five days after Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate began.
“As the Chinese Communist Party’s cover-up was aided and abetted by the World Health Organization, which insisted there was ‘no clear evidence’ of human to human transmission of the virus, Speaker Pelosi was prepping her souvenir pens to sign and send over the sham Articles of Impeachment to the Senate,” said a Senate staffer familiar with Cruz.
The video also quotes Trump’s speech during the State of the Union, addressing the looming pandemic before Congress. “Protecting Americans’ health also means fighting infectious diseases,” Trump says. “On the coronavirus outbreak in China, my administration will take all necessary steps to safeguard our citizens from this threat.”
Presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden accused Trump of downplaying the virus and ignoring the outbreak during its earlier spread. According to Axios, Biden’s campaign circulated those talking points among Democratic lawmakers.
“Donald Trump hasn’t taken responsibility for fighting coronavirus, or for the mistakes he has made in failing to do so. He ignored the warnings from health experts, from his own advisers, and from Joe Biden. He squandered precious time during which he should have been preparing. The result: America is seeing the worst death toll from the coronavirus of any country, and precipitous loss of jobs,” wrote Biden’s deputy campaign manager, according to Axios.
The memo cites Trump’s rhetoric toward China as a reason for the outbreak in the U.S., saying the president “turned a blind eye to an emerging global danger” and instead “was focused on appeasing China’s leaders as he was trying to clean up the mess in trade relations.”
Despite claims from Democrats, Cruz’s video concludes with a voice-over from the Texas senator: “The games the Democrats are playing on this are ridiculous. The partisan games they’re playing are having very real consequences across the country.”
The World Health Organization’s investigative report in February concluded that “early cases identified in Wuhan are believed to have acquired infection from a zoonotic source as many reported visiting or working in the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market.”
In early 2020, members of the U.S. intelligence community reportedly informed Trump that China was lying about the seriousness of the virus, which has since infected more than 3 million people worldwide. Officials informed the president that China “appeared to be minimizing the severity of the outbreak” and was “not being candid about the true scale of the crisis.”
Evidence has indicated China also misled the WHO about the severity of COVID-19 to prevent investigations in Wuhan and blocked foreign medical health experts from assisting with the containment of the disease. One study indicated that if China hadn’t misled the world about the virus’s severity, the coronavirus would have been significantly less widespread.
