Blistering video from George Conway’s conservative group rips laughable claim impeachment ‘distracted’ Trump from coronavirus

President Donald Trump’s army of knee-jerk defenders in the right-wing media have been jumping through hoops to explain why, back in January and February, he failed to take the coronavirus threat seriously. One Trumpian talking point is that no one could have seen the pandemic coming — which is nonsense, as everyone from intel officials to Peter Navarro (one of Trump’s main economic advisers) to former Vice President Joe Biden was sounding the alarm. And another bogus argument is that Trump, thanks to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other partisan Democrats, was distracted by impeachment. But the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump conservative group that includes attorney George Conway, tears that argument to shreds in a blistering new video.

The video, titled “Distraction,” opens with some grim statistics — noting that “coronavirus has now killed three times more Americans than 9/11. So what’s Donald Trump been up to? Blaming the impeachment hearings for distracting him from preparing for the pandemic.”

The Lincoln Project goes on to cite examples of Trump being warned that a giant storm was brewing — for example, the January 29 memo in which Navarro stressed to the National Security Council (NSC) that “coronavirus presented a grave threat to the United States.” And “days later,” the video adds, the World Health Organization (WHO) “declared it a global health emergency. Where was Trump? He wasn’t distracted. He had plenty to do — like campaign rallies and golfing.”

In a March 31 op-ed for the Washington Post, Conway pointed out that Trump’s impeachment trial ended on February 5, when he was acquitted.

The Lincoln’s Project video also notes that “in February, the virus spread to Europe. While Italy was shutting down and quarantines were being announced all over the world, Trump played more golf and packed thousands of people together. Sounds safe. The day before the first American died, where was Trump? Where do you think he was? At another rally. By March, the world was calling coronavirus a pandemic. Where was Trump? On Twitter, as usual, blaming everyone else.”

The video asserts that when Trump “finally bothered to take it seriously,” it was “too late for 10,000 Americans — and who knows how many more. Trump just didn’t care. He still doesn’t. He was never distracted.”

Watch the video below: