The BFD | If I Interviewed Trump about Covid…

Debbie Lerman

Debbie Lerman, 2023 Brownstone Fellow, has a degree in English from Harvard. She is a retired science writer and a practicing artist in Philadelphia, PA.

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It’s too late to propose questions to Tucker Carlson for his interview with Donald Trump, scheduled to air on Wednesday, August 23, 2023, because that interview has already been recorded.

In a fantasy world, here’s what I wish Carlson would ask:

Before Covid, your Presidency was going pretty well. You had a good shot at winning another term. Would you agree that the pandemic pretty much reversed that?
Actually, it wasn’t just the pandemic. It was your government’s response to the pandemic. The Democrats won by claiming you had botched the whole thing. They said hundreds of thousands of people died because you didn’t lock down soon enough and refused to wear a mask. They said the US should have behaved more like China than like Sweden. Do you agree?
A lot of Republicans now think you should have run the pandemic more like DeSantis did in Florida (even though they might not have said it at the time). It seems to me that before March 10th, 2020, you were planning to run it that way. And you were listening to your public health advisors from the CDC and NIH. Is that correct?
What was shocking to me was when you seemed to pivot 180 degrees in just a few days, from saying that it would not be worse than a bad flu season, to announcing that we would throw everything we had at it, locking down the whole country, and investing trillions of dollars in keeping the economy shut down. It was especially surprising that you agreed to the economic shutdown. What made you change your mind?
I’m going to be more specific on this, because a lot of information has come out suggesting that you changed your mind because your National Security Council, and related military and intelligence operatives, told you the virus was a potential bioweapon that leaked from a Chinese lab. Is that what you were told? Did they tell you millions of people would die and you would be responsible, if you didn’t follow their plan?
In a Time Magazine article you were quoted saying “I can’t tell you that” when you were asked about why you thought the virus came from a lab in Wuhan. You said “I’m not allowed to tell you that.” Who was not allowing you to speak openly about the possibility that it was a lab leak? Can you speak about it openly now?
Can you tell me who made the decision in the middle of March to invoke the Stafford Act in all 50 states at the same time (which had never been done before), and to put FEMA in charge as the Lead Federal Agency for pandemic response, when FEMA had no warning and no experience in this area at all? Who decided to remove HHS from the role of Lead Federal Agency, which it was supposed to have according to every single pandemic planning document before Covid? Did you make those decisions or did the NSC or other military or intelligence advisors tell you to take those steps?
When you brought Scott Atlas in, he advised you to open the country back up immediately. It seems like you really wanted someone in the White House with an opinion that was different from the one you were hearing in favor of lockdowns. But, for some reason, there was enormous resistance to bringing any experts in. There was even supposed to be a meeting at the end of March (long before Atlas arrived) with top epidemiologists that mysteriously got cancelled. Why did you have so little control over who advised you about the pandemic? Why didn’t you follow the advice of Scott Atlas if, as he reported in his book, you pretty much agreed with him that the lockdowns were disastrous?
Most people think Fauci was in charge of the pandemic response. But in his book, Dr. Atlas reports that you said the main problem wasn’t Fauci, it was Deborah Birx. Is that because Birx was in charge of coordinating the NSC/DHS response, and Fauci was just a front to make it seem like a public health response?
A few months into the lockdowns, you sounded as if you had lost control of the situation, like in the tweet from May 18th 2020 when you wrote in all caps: REOPEN OUR COUNTRY! You’d think if anyone could have ended the lockdowns, it would have been the President. But you seemed to feel helpless to reverse what was happening. Is that because there had been a sort of silent coup of the NSC and Department and Homeland Security?
If the answers to all the previous questions are classified, that would confirm that the response to Covid involved secret machinations of national security entities. Can you at least confirm that much?
Some have suggested that the entire Covid response was launched as a way to make you look bad and make sure you did not get a second term. Do you agree? If so, who do you think was behind that plan?
Were you aware of the massive censorship and propaganda that were happening to make people accept the lockdowns and vaccines? Do you feel like you were part of that campaign to convince people? Or do you feel like you were somehow forced to participate in it?
Were you in touch with leaders of other allied countries to coordinate the response to the pandemic? It’s pretty astonishing how all our closest allies ended up doing exactly the same thing at the same time. If you were not the one who was coordinating with foreign leaders, were you aware of that type of coordination going on – especially with the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Germany, and other European allies?