This may be the best article I have read in 2023. The author says what I have said since 2020: That Trump, while an excellent President overall and a true American patriot, made a catastrophic error when he signed on for the COVID overreaction in those fateful two weeks of March 2020, and allied himself with people as venomous and sinister as Fauci and Birx. His presidency, his personal fortune and the American republic have never recovered.
“Two Weeks That Changed America”, by Steve McCann (The American Thinker, 12/12/23)
I was recently asked if there was a defining moment that dramatically accelerated and perhaps made permanent the chaos this nation is presently facing. My answer: the two weeks between March 16 and March 30, 2020.
On March 16th, Donald Trump declared a National Emergency for COVID-19 and effectively shut down the nation for “15 days to slow the spread”. At a press conference announcing the temporary shutdown he said: “With several weeks of focused action, we can turn the corner, and turn it quickly.”
Regardless of the severity, never throughout the annals of mankind has a nation been shut down to combat a pandemic. However, the politically compromised and dishonest medical advisors to Trump (including Drs. Fauci and Birx) advised him to declare a National Emergency and agree to a shutdown and social distancing by pointing to the supposed success of China’s choreographed lockdowns.
Soon thereafter, Trump allied with Mitch McConnell and the Democrats to structure an unprecedented economic relief package which was passed by Congress on March 27, 2020. Trump signed the $2.2 Trillion Coronavirus relief bill or the CARES Act on the same day. This was the largest single spending bill in human history and equivalent to the annual Gross Domestic Product of Russia.
Within the voluminous CARES Act was $400 million to the states to legitimize, promote, and underwrite mass mail-in voting and by default, ballot harvesting. By including this spending in the relief package, both political parties and the White House gave their stamp of approval for mass mail-in voting and the inevitable attendant abuse and manipulation.
The announced initial 15 days to slow the spread of COVID-19 days became 45 days as Donald Trump, on March 30, 2020, reluctantly extended the de facto national shutdown for an additional 30 days after acquiescing to the so-called public health experts in the government.
Once that extension was announced, Trump lost control of events and it became impossible for him to reverse course. He was mercilessly mocked whenever he talked about ending the lockdowns toward the end of the 45-day period as the legacy media and the Democrats were incessantly fearmongering and the federal medical bureaucracy was deliberately inflating the infection and fatality numbers.
This cabal was secure in the knowledge that the measures outlined by Trump and the White House Covid Task Force would sink the economy and open the door to mass mail-in voting and voter fraud. Which would also be the catalyst to defeat Trump in the general election. Accordingly, the political opposition and legacy media unrelentingly wallowed in alarmism and championed draconian lockdowns, masking and social distancing while also promoting mass mail-in voting.
Thus, the extension issued on March 30th inevitably led to long-term lockdowns, massive economic dislocation, protracted school closures as the various state governors, pointing to Trump’s decisions as their justification, initiated their own lockdown regimens. Trump was confronted with the reality that a president has no legal basis to intervene in the shutdown policies of the individual states.
Instinctively, Trump knew he had made a mistake as he watched the economy implode. However, due to the upcoming election, he hesitated to remove those around him, such as the duplicitous Drs. Fauci and Birx, who were not only incompetent but in league with the Democrat/Legacy Media axis.