by Jeffrey A. Tucker
The American Institute for Economic Research
See if you can make sense of the following transcript of an interview with Donald Trump on the lockdown, as conducted by Sharyl Attkisson.
President Trump: So I was hearing millions of people, and it would have been millions of people if we didn’t shut down. Now, would I shut it down again? No, because we understand it now much better. We didn’t know anything about it, it was new, it was fresh.
Sharyl: You mean you would not have, in retrospect, shut down the –
President Trump: I would have done exactly. We’ve done the exact moves that I would have done. And I did it early. Tony Fauci, Dr. Birx, they all said what I did was incredible. In retrospect, Tony, as you know, never thought he was going to be as severe as it was. And we’re talking about months later, a long time after I did the ban. I did a ban and nobody thought I should do it. I mean, literally I don’t think anybody thought I should do it. I made that decision by myself and it turned out to be a great decision. Hundreds of thousands of lives are saved.
Which is it? I get that all politicians are impervious to admitting error much less expressing contrition. It’s not just Trump. I’ve heard some version of this story from experts at all levels who both pushed the lockdown but now say it was a mistake – but a mistake that somehow had to be made because: “What else can you do?”