Terrie Rizzo in the Palm Beach Post: “It’s OK to hold Trump accountable for response to coronavirus pandemic”

As Trump attempts to distract and rewrite history about his delayed and chaotic response to the coronavirus pandemic, Florida Democratic Party Chair Terrie Rizzo penned an op-ed for the Palm Beach Post to hold him accountable for making this crisis worse.

Key Highlights:

• Actions — and inactions — have consequences, and Americans deserve to know how Trump’s negligence worsened this crisis.
• This president could and should have taken decisive action months ago to slow the spread of this virus, but instead of preparing Americans for a deadly health crisis, he chose to ignore the experts, downplay its threat to the public, and delay crucial decisions to mitigate the spread.
• The Koreans rapidly scaled up testing, allowing them to identify and slow the spread of the disease before it spiraled out of control. Trump ignored his intelligence briefings, called it a “hoax,” and continued on with business as usual. Early action matters: South Korea now has 20 cases per 100,000 people, whereas the U.S. has 142 cases per 100,000 people.
• Not only did Trump recklessly ignore experts urging him to take decisive action on COVID-19 months ago, he also left Americans vulnerable to a pandemic in the first place. He eliminated the White House Global Pandemic Response team, cut the CDC position dedicated to detecting outbreaks in China, and slashed the CDC’s efforts to prevent global disease outbreak by 80%.
• We are in a catastrophic humanitarian crisis and Donald Trump’s erratic and delayed leadership has tragically made it worse.

The Palm Beach Post: Point of View: It’s OK to hold Trump accountable for response to coronavirus pandemic