nancy messonier was exactly on the money, she knew what she was talking about because it was her field, her expertise, and she was right. donald trump on air force one didn t want to hear what was right, wanted to hear the happy talk he continued to push, and it didn t stop there, by the way. it continued for months after we were all experiencing exactly what messonier had forecast. he continued to say the virus wasn t a problem. well, here we are now, people who didn t think the virus was a problem are literally in icu units questioning how this could have happened when they were told repeatedly that the virus was a hoax and was just a political thing that democrats were using to hurt donald trump, or at least his foes were. i have to stop for a moment and say one thing about the reporting that phil and i did in this moment. so angry was donald trump about messonier, so angry was he about this sort of to him, you know, anonymous doctor that alex azar, the hhs secretary, warned the
there were a few things that the trump administration did that are very hard to get past. one was, as we know, his ability to deny the reality of the virus which he did until such time as the nba went out and the stock market went down was real dangerous so his ability to deny real hurt us. if he had said we have a problem and then he squashed all dissent. there s a part of the book where alex azar, the head of health and human services wanted to say the word on fox & friends that the virus wasn t a problem but could deteriorate rapidly and because that have the white house pulled him from the show and banned him from doing media for 45 days so here we are in the middle of a global pandemic and our department of health and human services isn t allowed to talk to the press or the public, and there s a number of examples like that, and i go through my conversations with jared kushner and with debby birx, et cetera,