President Trump said Tuesday that his response to coronavirus was not affected by his impeachment trial in the Senate — but said Democrats were.
The virus, known as SARS-CoV-2, was first detected in Wuhan, China on Dec. 1, according to Chinese officials. Trump’s Senate trial began Jan. 16, a day after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) signed the articles of impeachment with more than a dozen commemorative pens.
The first diagnosis of the virus in the United States was Jan. 20. Trump’s 20-day trial ended Feb. 5 with his acquittal.
During his impeachment trial, the Trump administration created a coronavirus task force, which occurred on Jan. 27. Two days later, Trump chaired a meeting of the task force, which is now led by Vice President Mike Pence. On Jan. 31, the president enacted a travel ban on China, blocking all entries from the country, a move criticized by many Democrats. And on Feb. 4, he mentioned coronavirus in his State of the Union address.
Pelosi later tore Trump’s speech in half.
Democrats, meanwhile, had done little. On Feb. 5, the day Trump was acquitted, Democrats held a hearing, but only in a subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Still, they have pointed out that Trump initially downplayed the virus, at one point saying it was already contained in the U.S.
In a radio interview, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was asked by host Hugh Hweitt: “In your experience in the Senate, was Senator [Tom] Cotton the first one to say ‘Hey, Leader, hey Mitch, this is a deadly situation that I do not trust to the Chinese?’ Was he first?”
Said McConnell: “He was first, and I think Tom was right on the mark. And it came up while we were tied down on the impeachment trial. And I think it diverted the attention of the government, because everything every day was all about impeachment. But Tom figured this out early, and he was absolutely right.”
On Tuesday, during the daily coronavirus task force press conference at the White House, Trump was asked, “Did [impeachment] divert your attention, or your team’s attention?”
Trump gave a lengthy response.
“Did it divert my attention? I think I’m getting A-pluses for the way I handled myself during the phony impeachment, OK? It was a hoax. But certainly I guess I thought of it. And I think I probably acted — I don’t think I would have done any better had I not been impeached, ok? I think that’s a tribute to something. Maybe it’s a tribute to me. But I don’t think I would have acted any differently, or I don’t think I would have acted any faster. But the Democrats, their whole life, whole being, their whole existence was to try and get me out of office any way they can, even if it was a phony deal — and it was a phony deal,” he said.
In his radio interview, McConnell also criticized Pelosi for “inserting herself” into Senate negotiations on the recently passed coronavirus stimulus bill.
“The way I thought it would work best would be for those of us in the Senate to try to get started on a bipartisan basis and we were doing really quite well, as you may recall, until the Speaker of the House decided to insert herself into the process,” the Senate leader said. That, he said, “created a couple of days of unnecessary partisan sniping.”