Trump says he didn’t know of, still hasn’t seen Navarro memos on possible pandemic

President Donald Trump on Monday denied that he’d ever seen a handful of memos, written and circulated via the White House by his prime trade adviser starting in January, that warned the coronavirus might value the country trillions of dollars and imperil the lives of hundreds of thousands of People.

On the White House throughout a coronavirus process pressure information briefing, the president stated he’d discovered of Peter Navarro’s memos, the contents of which have been first disclosed on Monday night time, just a few days ago, however he asserted that the documents lined up together with his journey restrictions for foreigners coming from China.

“I didn’t see them. I didn’t search for them,” Trump informed reporters.

Navarro’s memos specified by stark terms the catastrophic toll the virus might have — each on American lives and the U.S. financial system — and prescribed various containment measures that may need seemed drastic at the time but that finally came to fruition.

Within the first memo, dated Jan. 29, Navarro, a infamous China hawk, argued for a direct ban on travel from China, then the epicenter of the outbreak. It was a seemingly drastic step that Trump took days later. Though the president has held up the journey ban as evidence that he took the virus significantly from the starting, and there have been confirmed instances of coronavirus in the U.S. at that date, Trump publicly continued to downplay the severity of the menace.

Navarro’s Jan. 29 memo warned that with out “aggressive” containment measures like the journey ban that he advocated, the value to the U.S. financial system might soar to just about $6 trillion, compared with an financial hit of $2.9 billion to $34.6 billion a month with a travel ban in place. The memo additionally laid out an estimated demise toll of as much as half one million People.

The second memo was dated Feb. 23 and addressed to the president instantly via the workplaces of the National Safety Council, Trump’s chief of employees and the White Home coronavirus process drive. That document outlined a request for an “fast” supplemental appropriation of at the least $3 billion. The White Home’s first supplemental help request to Congress, which came days after Navarro’s memo, was drawn right down to $2.5 billion, though lawmakers rejected that sum and gave the administration $eight billion to cope with the burgeoning crisis.

“There's an growing chance of a full-blown COVID-19 pandemic that would infect as many as 100 million People, with a lack of lifetime of as many as 1-2 million souls,” the memo warned, referring to the respiratory sickness brought on by the novel coronavirus. It additionally laid out the levels of anticipated want for the sorts of medical provides well being care suppliers have been pleading desperately for over the previous few weeks.

Regardless of the warnings contained in Navarro’s memos, Trump has been insistent in current weeks that no one “might have recognized” concerning the menace posed by the virus, whereas additionally asserting that he’d recognized all alongside that the preliminary outbreak in China might have morphed into a worldwide pandemic.

Trump sought on Tuesday evening to elucidate his seemingly contradictory stances by arguing that he didn’t need to panic the nation.

“Instances actually didn’t construct up [in the U.S.] for a while, but you need to perceive, I am a cheerleader for this nation. I don’t need to create havoc and shock and all the things else,” he stated, noting that “finally once I was saying that, I am additionally closing it down.”

“I clearly was concerned about it as a result of I closed down our nation to China, which was heavily infected,” Trump added.

The president informed reporters he still had not seen Navarro’s memos, however denied that his administration’s early response, which has been extensively panned, would have modified if he’d recognized about them.

“I don’t assume it might’ve modified,” he stated. “I principally did what the memo stated and the memo was, you recognize, the memo was a reasonably good memo from the standpoint that he talked, I guess — I didn’t see it but.”

Finally, Trump concluded, it didn’t matter whether or not he’d seen the memos.

“He wrote a memo and he was proper and I haven’t seen the memo,” the president stated. “I'll see it afterward, after this. However it didn’t matter whether I noticed or not, because I acted on my own. I assume I had the same instincts as Peter.”

Src: Trump says he didn’t know of, still hasn’t seen Navarro memos on possible pandemic
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