Former President Donald Trump released a video on Tuesday touting his opposition to the resurrection of mask mandates in reaction to the appearance of Covid subvariants.
“The left wing lunatics are trying very hard to bring back Covid lockdowns and mandates with all of their sudden fear mongering about the new variants that are coming,” Trump said.
“Gee whiz. You know what else is coming? An election,” he added. “They want to restart the Covid hysteria so they can justify more lockdowns, more censorship, more illegal drop boxes, more mail-in ballots and trillions of dollars in payoffs to their political allies heading into the 2024 election.”
“Does that sound familiar?” he continued. “These are bad people. These are sick people we’re dealing with. But to every Covid tyrant to wants to take away our freedom, hear these words: We will not comply. So don’t even think about it.”
“We will not shut down our schools. We will not accept your lockdowns. We will not abide by your mask mandates, and we will not tolerate your vaccine mandates,” he went on.
“They rig the 2020 election and now they’re trying to do the same thing all over again by rigging the most important election in the history of our country, the 2024 election, even if it means trying to bring back Covid,” he said.
“But they will fail because we will not let it happen. When I’m back in the White House, I will use every available authority to cut federal funding to any school, college, airline, or public transportation system that imposes a mask mandate or a vaccine mandate.”
However, even as Trump supporters welcomed the candidate’s reassurance that their preferred candidate stood opposed to bringing back Covid mandates, there were others who weren’t having the former president’s revisionist history on his Covid response.
That included the Twitter/X writers who remarked with a Community Note.
The first note was a series of tweets by Donald Trump at the time he was president.
“The Trump Administration with other federal agencies began the lockdown and social distancing rules in 2020,” the first note remarked.
“President Trump issued national guidelines that included closing schools and avoiding bars, restaurants and groups of more than 10,” the second note said, citing a New York Times story.
Even then, however, the March 16 story criticizes Donald Trump for not issuing authoritarian mandates that other nations had issued.
“President Trump, under pressure to take more significant steps to slow the spreading coronavirus, recommended on Monday that Americans stop unnecessary travel and avoid bars, restaurants and groups of more than 10 people, as he warned that the outbreak could extend well into the summer,’ the Times said.
“The national guidelines, which also advise home-schooling and the curtailing of visits to nursing homes and long-term care facilities, are the most robust response so far from the Trump administration,” the Times continued. “But the guidelines, which officials described as a trial set, are not mandatory and fall short of a national quarantine and internal travel restrictions, which many health officials had urged.”
“And they do not reflect the urgency of actions taken around the world as governments in Italy, France, Spain and elsewhere began imposing stringent lockdowns on citizens,” the report went on.
“Even within the United States, local governments were imposing shelter-at-home orders and police-enforced quarantine zones.”
Thus, the Trump administration can be faulted for the early pandemic response, but the bulk of the most economically damaging and socially destructive policies were carried out by state governors.
If anything, President Donald Trump did not do enough to stand up to the civil rights violations occurring across the United States during his presidency; but it is not a just accusation to characterize him as a fellow Covid tyrant.
