Trump never shutdown anything. He explicitly left it up to the states. And then later in 2020, urged the lockdown states to reopen. States like Texas and Flordia had been open for months already.
He actually nailed what the strategy should have been.
Trump tosses coronavirus shutdowns back to the states (April 2020)
The president told governors he’d let them decide when to restart shuttered activity, offering general guidance on a phased approach.
In a call with governors and at a White House news conference, the president marked the moment — which he called “open up America again“ — as a key step in reviving a devastated economy and an opportunity for state leaders to tailor a response to their individual needs.
HEALTH AND SCIENCE
Trump says nationwide lockdown would ‘ultimately inflict more harm than it would prevent’ (August 2020)
- President Donald Trump insisted Monday that shutting down the United States in an attempt to curb the coronavirus would cause more harm than good.
- He said the U.S. only initially shut down to prevent the overflow of hospitals and to allow U.S. health officials and scientists to learn more about the new virus, including developing effective treatments to fight it.
President
Donald Trump insisted Monday that shutting down the United States in an attempt to curb the coronavirus would cause more harm than good, doubling down on previous comments that he would not call for a nationwide lockdown.
“It’s important for all Americans to recognize that a permanent lockdown is not a viable path forward producing the result that you want or certainly not a viable path forward and would ultimately inflict more harm than it would prevent,” Trump said during a White House briefing on the virus.
He said the U.S. only initially shut down to prevent the overflow of hospitals and to allow U.S. health officials and scientists to learn more about the new virus, including developing effective treatments to fight it. He said the U.S. is doing “really well” on developing coronavirus drugs and vaccines.
“Lockdowns do not prevent infection in the future. They just don’t. It comes back many times, it comes back,” Trump said.
“In our current phase, we must focus on protecting those at highest risk while allowing younger and healthier Americans to resume work and school with careful precautions. Ideally we want to open those schools. We want to open them,” he said.
State lawmakers, rather than the federal government, have imposed harsh restrictions on residents and businesses throughout the nation’s coronavirus response. But with the U.S. economy straining under the social distancing rules, Trump has loudly called on the country to reopen.
Trump has
insisted that he wouldn’t close the country if a second wave of coronavirus cases emerged. Instead, the U.S. will “put out the fires” as they arise. In recent weeks he’s pushed for schools to reopen in the fall regardless the state of the nation’s Covid-19 outbreak, saying that keeping schools closed “is causing death also.”