Trump says he never saw aide’s memos that warned coronavirus could endanger millions of Americans – By Michael Collins, John Fritze & Rebecca Morin (USA Today) / April 7 2020
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Tuesday he has not seen memos in which one of his top advisers warned earlier this year that a coronavirus pandemic could endanger millions of Americans, but that even if he had, it would not have changed his response to the crisis.
Peter Navarro, the top trade and manufacturing aide to the president, laid out the warning in two memos – one on Jan. 29 and another on Feb. 23 – while Trump played down concerns about the coronavirus, according to reports from the New York Times and Axios.
Trump said he didn’t know about the memos until a couple of days ago. “I asked him about it a little while ago because I read something about a memo,” Trump said during a White House coronavirus briefing.
Trump downplayed Navarro’s warnings, arguing that he already had started to move to shut down U.S. borders by the time the memos were written.
“Ultimately, I did more or less what the memo said right around the time the memo came out,” Trump said.
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