I worked in the White House on emergency preparedness. Trump's coronavirus response is unforgivable

As the United States and most of the world adjust to our “new normal,” there is no doubt that this pandemic will impact the presidential election in a myriad of ways. Will it affect the outcome? Only time will tell. Should it affect the outcome? Absolutely.

As the former Director of Administration and Senior Advisor to both Vice President Al Gore and Vice President Joe Biden in the White House, I had the privilege of representing both of those offices on the White House Emergency Preparedness and Continuity of Government working group. It was in that capacity that I learned the power of what I call the four P’s of emergency preparedness: Plan, Prepare, Prevent, and Perform.

During my tenure in Vice President Gore’s office, we knew that the potential for disaster lay ahead of us as we entered a new century and a new millennium in the year 2000. It was coined Y2K. Our working group worked diligently for over a year to plan our response and prepare for worst-case scenarios to prevent damaging outcomes to our nation. We developed comprehensive plans to be performed and executed to lead us technologically, operationally, safely and efficiently into the new millennium. The result was a seamless experience for our citizens and the White House.

It was and is almost impossible for the Trump administration to plan, prepare, prevent, and perform effectively when the President abolished the White House Pandemic Response Office and cut the CDC budget. Rather than prepare for the worst, as previous administrations have done, this White House chose to create a vulnerability for which we are paying a precious price.

If that wasn’t enough, President Trump is on record as having referred to this pandemic in misleading and minimizing terms time and again while indicating that his administration had the situation under control when in fact it was headed into a preventable death spiral.

From the very onset, it was apparent that rather than planning, preparing, and preventing, President Trump was busy pontificating and prevaricating.

On January 22, he said in a CNBC interview, “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” And on January 30, Trump said in a speech in Michigan, “We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment — five — and those people are all recuperating successfully. But we’re working very closely with China and other countries, and we think it’s going to have a very good ending for us…that I can assure you.”

Then during his trip to India, in what should have frightened every American, the President’s propensity for hyperbole brought yet another round of false hope and moment of deceit when he claimed, while referencing Covid-19, “I think that’s a problem that’s going to go away… they have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we are very close to a vaccine.”

The President’s antics continued at a press conference in late February when, in another attempt to not spook the markets, he said, “And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.” Only the next day, he added, “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.”

At the time of writing, over 80,000 Americans are confirmed infected with the coronavirus, and over 1,000 of my fellow citizens have perished.

Even the most generous interpretation or assessment of President Trump’s words, actions, inactions, and diminishing hyperbole would lead any reasonable-minded human being to conclude that the six to seven weeks that he failed to adequately plan, prepare, prevent, and perform have resulted in the spread of this virus, and contributed to the needless deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans.

Do these actions and words reflect that of a responsible leader? Did President Trump try to hide the gravity of the pandemic for political purposes? Did he put economics above humanity? Does he really believe that sacrificing the lives of innocent Americans is worth a rise in the stock market?

The American electorate will cast their votes in November, and these questions will be on that ballot.

Will this debacle make for the demise of President Trump’s re-election? We shall see. Should his immoral, irresponsible, and indignant handling of this crisis keep him from a second term as President of the United States of America? The answer is a resounding, “Yes.”

Moe Vela is an attorney, entrepreneur, consultant, political commentator, opinion maker, author of Little Secret, Big Dreams and the first Hispanic American to serve twice in the White House in a senior executive role. He is the Chief Transparency Officer and on the Board of Directors of TransparentBusiness

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