Fact check: On Sunday, Trump takes no break from repeating false virus claims

President Donald Trump used Sunday’s White House briefing to repeat some of his favorite false claims about the coronavirus crisis and to make some new ones. Trump falsely claimed, again, that he “inherited” a defective coronavirus test; the faulty test was developed this year. He falsely claimed, again, that “nobody ever thought” there would be a crisis like this; there were years of warnings. And he falsely claimed, again, that his travel restrictions on China and Europe, for which he exempted large groups of travelers, amounted to a complete “ban.” Trump also claimed that all of the people protesting against pandemic restrictions have stood six feet apart from each other. Some have not. And he claimed that a critical component of coronavirus tests, the reagent, is “so easy to get,” though governors from both parties and public health officials in multiple states say it is not. Here’s a roundup of the claims and facts. Governors and reagents Trump was asked about governors who say they cannot get a hold of a sufficient quantity of chemicals known as reagents, which are needed to conduct coronavirus tests. He responded, “We’re in great shape. It’s so easy to get.” Facts First: Trump might perhaps have meant that reagents are easy for the federal government to get. But it’s simply not true that they are “easy to get” for states or for laboratories. Governors from both parties have said in the past week they are having difficulty obtaining them. Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that his state is experiencing shortages on both swabs and reagents; Hogan said, “to try to push this off to say that the governors have plenty of testing, and they should just get to work on testing, somehow we aren’t doing our job, is just absolutely false.” Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said on the same program: “Well, right now, I can tell you, we could double or even triple the number of tests that we’re executing daily if we had the swabs and reagents.” Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and his health chief expressed frustration on Friday that testing at hospitals in the state was being impeded by a shortage of reagents, saying on CNN’s “OutFront”: “It’s a supply chain production problem and that’s really what is holding it back. If they had more reagent, they would be able to expand.” On NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, before Trump’s briefing, DeWine made a plea to the federal government for help on the reagent situation. Republican Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts said Wednesday that it has been a challenge to get all of the supplies needed to conduct tests, specifically saying that acquiring reagents was an issue. Peter Iwen, director of the Nebraska Public Health Laboratory, told Omaha’s KETV in a story published Wednesday that supplies they need to run tests were being sent instead to labs in other states: “We’re trying to compete with those people, and we’re just not getting the reagents sent to us.” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo called Saturday for federal help with managing the reagent supply chain. Protesters stood ‘six feet apart’ The president defended protests against stay-at-home orders in states across the country, saying that those who participated were “all six feet apart” as recommended by the CDC’s social distancing guidelines. Trump also seemed to offer words of encouragement to the protesters. “If people feel that way, you’re allowed to protest,” President Trump said. “I watched the protest, and they were all six-feet apart. I mean it was a very orderly group of people. And but … you know, some have gone too far, some governors have gone too far. Some of the things that have happened are maybe not so appropriate.” He continued, “As far as protesters, you know, I see protesters for all sorts of things. And I’m with everybody. I’m with everybody.” Facts first: Protesters gathered in several state capitals this week to voice their opposition to stay-at-home orders issued by governors to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. But while some sought to adhere to social distancing rules by staying in their cars, other protesters crowded together in contravention of those guidelines. In Michigan, protesters drove cars to crowd streets around the state capitol in protest, but some got out of their cars and crowded the steps of the capitol building. One attendee even told CNN affiliate WILX, “I think every single person here is probably going to get coronavirus, we’re all within six feet of each other.” In Kentucky, protesters standing within feet of each other chanted “Open Up Kentucky!” and “You’re not a king, we won’t kiss your ring” outside the room where Gov. Andy Beshear was giving his daily coronavirus update on April 15. Meanwhile, a striking image by Columbus Post-Dispatch’s Joshua Bickel of the at a protest in Ohio showed a crowd of protesters packed against doors outside the Statehouse Atrium in Columbus on April 13. Travel restrictions The President responded to questions regarding criticism of his administration’s slow response to the coronavirus by touting travel restrictions he announced at the end of January and in mid-March. In a heated exchange with CBS News White House Correspondent Weijia Jiang, Trump said “I did a ban, where I’m closing up the entire country.” Trump referred to these restrictions on travel from China and parts of Europe as “bans” multiple times throughout the briefing. Facts First: Trump did not close up the entire country. It’s also misleading to call the travel restrictions Trump announced against China and Europe a ban because they contained multiple exemptions. Only foreign nationals who had been in China, Europe’s Schengen area, the UK or Ireland within the past 14 days are outright banned from entering the US. As of February 2, US citizens who had been in China’s Hubei province in the two weeks prior to their return to the United States are subject to a mandatory quarantine of up to 14 days upon their return to the US. American citizens returning from the rest of mainland China may also face up to 14 days of quarantine after undergoing health screenings at selected ports of entry. The broader European travel suspension Trump announced on March 11 applied to the 26 countries in the Schengen area, a European zone in which people can move freely across internal borders without being subjected to border checks. While Trump initially identified the United Kingdom as exempt, additional countries that are not in the Schengen area and thus also exempt from the restrictions include Ireland, Croatia, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Serbia, Armenia, Montenegro, Belarus and Russia. As of March 14, the ban was expanded to include foreign nationals traveling from UK and Ireland. The restrictions also did not apply to US citizens returning from Europe as well as permanent US residents and certain family members of both citizens and permanent residents. You can read more about the European travel restrictions here. Nobody could have seen this coming While discussing the impact coronavirus has had around the world, Trump said, “nobody ever thought this could have happened, a thing like this,” in reference to the coronavirus pandemic. Facts First: Public health and national security officials have been warning for years of the potential dangers of a pandemic, including Trump’s very own health and human services secretary, Alex Azar, who said in 2019 that the threat of a pandemic flu kept him up at night. As CNN’s KFile team reported in early April, Azar and Tim Morrison, then a special assistant to the President and senior director for weapons of mass destruction and biodefense on the National Security Council, spoke at the BioDefense Summit in April 2019, where they specifically talked about the possibility of a flulike pandemic. When it comes to the supplies needed for such a pandemic, studies and health experts have warned of the medical equipment shortages the US would face. Dr. David Morens, a top National Institutes of Health official, specifically noted in October 2018 that there would not be enough room in hospitals in the case of a pandemic like the 1918 flu. Morens also said that while the total number of items like drugs, antibiotics, antivirals and ventilators in the US national stockpile is unknown, “what I do know is it’s not nearly enough.” “Inherited” tests Speaking about testing for the coronavirus, Trump said, “Look, I told you, we inherited a lot of garbage.” He added, “We took – they had tests that were no good. They had – all the stuff was no good. It came from somewhere, so whoever came up with it. But I’m proud to tell you that now we went from having a lot of bad things happening in CDC to having great things happening.” Facts First: Since this is a new virus that was first identified nearly three years into Trump’s presidency, the bad tests couldn’t possibly be “inherited.” In fact, the faulty initial test for the coronavirus from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was created during Trump’s administration in early 2020. This is a claim Trump has made multiple times, and which we have also fact checked multiple times, including as recently as last night. “He is lying. He is lying 100%. He is lying because he is trying to shift blame to others, even if the attempt is totally nonsensical,” Gregg Gonsalves, an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at the Yale School of Public Health, said of an earlier version of this Trump claim. The claim “doesn’t make sense because it is false,” Tara Smith, an epidemiology professor at Kent State University, said of an earlier version. “This is a new virus.” Michael Mina, assistant professor of epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, called an earlier version of the claim “absurd” given that “this virus did not exist in the prior administration.”