President Donald Trump may rate his fumbled response to the coronavirus pandemic as a 10 out of 10.
But historian John M. Barry, author of the 2005 bestseller “The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History” about the 1918 pandemic, thinks it’s at best a 3.5.
And in an interview with The Washington Post published Tuesday, Barry suggested even that score was “overly generous.”
Barry noted Trump downplayed the threat of the virus that has gone on to kill almost 100,000 people nationwide. Although the president eventually began to take the outbreak more seriously, he continued to give out “inaccurate information on a daily basis.”
The United States’ response to this pandemic will be remembered in 100 years’ time as “incomprehensibly incoherent,” Barry said, arguing that the most important lesson was to “tell the truth.”
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