House Democrats on Monday accused the White House of intentionally downplaying the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic while states began reopening, despite privately warning several “red zone” states.
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis released eight weeks’ worth of reports from the Trump administration’s coronavirus task force and argued they allowed tens of thousands to die on their watch while not enforcing their own policy recommendations.
“Rather than being straight with the American people and creating a national plan to fix the problem, the president and his enablers kept these alarming reports private while publicly downplaying the threat to millions of Americans,” Majority Whip James Clyburn, the committee chair, said in a statement.
“As a result of the president’s failures, more than 58,000 additional Americans have died since the task force first started issuing private warnings, and many of the task force’s recommendations still have not been implemented,” the South Carolina Democrat added.
The reports showed that as early as June 23, the administration notified seven states they were considered in the “red zone.”
This category was reserved for areas of the highest risk, where there were more than 100 cases per 100,000 residents and more than 10% of tests were positive.
That number increased throughout July and August, and by early this month, 23 states were listed in the red zone.
The committee also found that several states are failing to meet public health guidelines the White House task recommended to them, particularly Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and Oklahoma.
In all, 14 states that were in the “red zone” resisted statewide mask mandates that the task force suggested.
Throughout the summer, the Trump administration has been taking an optimistic approach to the pandemic, saying the situation was improving and pushing for local economies and schools to reopen.
The administration did not immediately respond to The Washington Times’ request for comment.
Minority Whip Steve Scalise, the top-ranking Republican on the panel, shot down the Democrats’ claims and accused them of peddling misinformation since data on the pandemic have been “widely available” the whole time.
“Democrats again have created another phony scandal, this time claiming they’ve unearthed individual state coronavirus data when in fact the data was publicly available all along,” said Mr. Scalise, Louisiana Republican. “At no point in the Democrats’ latest fake news do they acknowledge that cases continue to decline, testing continues to increase, therapies continue to improve, and vaccine trials are proceeding at an historic pace.”
He also praised President Trump for putting the emphasis on states, arguing it gave them the freedom to tailor how they address the pandemic.
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