Amidst the debate about the Trump administration’s response to the COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic that began in early 2020, which many critics contended was too slow because the president initially failed to acknowledge the severity of the issue, social media users circulated a meme that supposedly documented a marked contradiction in the U.S. president’s statements on the issue across time:  According to this meme, as late as March 9, 2020, Donald Trump was still criticizing the press for supposedly “inflam[ing] the CoronaVirus situation” and quoting the U.S. surgeon general as asserting that, “The risk is low to the average American.” Yet a mere eight days later, according to the meme, Trump claimed he “felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.” However observers might choose to interpret them, both of these statements are accurately dated and attributed to Trump in the meme. Trump tweeted the first statement on March 9: The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power (it used to be greater!) to inflame the CoronaVirus situation, far beyond what the facts would warrant. Surgeon General, “The risk is low to the average American.” — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 9, 2020  The latter was a statement Trump made during a Coronavirus Task Force press briefing from the White House on March 17. As can be seen in the following video (at the 1:05:00 mark), as Trump fielded a question from a reporter about whether his “tone” on the pandemic had suddenly changed the previous day, he declared, “This is a pandemic. I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic. All you had to do is look at other countries; I think now it’s in almost 120 countries all over the world. No, I’ve always viewed it as very serious. There was no difference yesterday from days before”: The New York Times chronicled this statement from Trump and contrasted it with others he had made in the weeks leading up to it: For weeks, President Trump has minimized the coronavirus, mocked concern about it and treated the risk from it cavalierly. On [March 17] he took to the White House lectern and made a remarkable assertion: He knew it was a pandemic all along. “This is a pandemic,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.” This is what Mr. Trump has actually said over the past two months: On Jan. 22, asked by a CNBC reporter whether there were “worries about a pandemic,” the president replied: “No, not at all. We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”
A meme documents U.S. President Donald Trump's statements about the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.