Illinois Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker revealed during a speech this week that he clashed with President Donald Trump during the first Trump administration after Trump promised necessary medical equipment during the COVID pandemic on the condition that Pritzker praise him publicly.
Five years ago, the United States was grappling with the initial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The country had entered shutdowns that had severe economic consequences, leaving businesses and industries on the brink of collapse.
At a Center for American Progress event on Wednesday, Pritzker recalled how U.S. companies were price-gouging governments, hospitals, and emergency services at a time when lives were on the line—yet, he noted, Trump seemed perfectly okay with this.
He said:
“He could have fought for us. He really could have. Instead, he made self-serving deals. He would send life-saving equipment if only we would agree to praise him on the Sunday talk shows. That is literally a deal that he put in front of me.”
“I was desperate. My hospitals were filling up. And time was of the essence, so I agreed that I would do that if he sent me what we needed. Because my job at the time was to do virtually anything to get the White House to help us save lives.”
You can hear what he said in the video below.
Trump is a notoriously thin-skinned narcissist, so no one was surprised.
Over 1.2 million Americans have died since the pandemic began. Many of these people could have been saved had Trump's administration taken the situation seriously from the start.
Many prominent Trump surrogates have downplayed the fact that Trump raged against shutdowns, attacked healthcare professionals, frequently undermined the efforts of the White House COVID-19 Task Force, and openly pushed conspiracy theories about the virus and the vaccination campaign that were embraced by his followers, hindering the country's ability to rebound from the pandemic's economic shock.
According to a 2021 Lancet commission tasked with assessing Trump's health policy record, the US could have prevented 40% of COVID-19 deaths if its death rates had aligned with those in other high-income G7 countries. The commission stated that Trump "brought misfortune to the USA and the planet" during his four-year tenure.
The commission emphasized the increasing evidence that Trump's rollbacks of regulations led to a rise in death and disease. From 2016 to 2019, annual deaths related to environmental and occupational factors surged by more than 22,000, reversing a trend of steady decline.
The negative effects of the rescinded regulations were especially pronounced in states that had been strong supporters of Trump in 2016, which were also the most impacted by cuts to health insurance coverage, as the report noted.
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