Sullivan picks up on GOP campaign memo to attack China, 'don't defend Trump'

On April 17, spin doctors for Republican senators released a 57-page “Corona Big Book,” advising candidates how to handle the politics of the pandemic.

In addition to suggesting that they say, “My opponent is soft on China, fails to stand up to the Chinese Communist Party, and can’t be trusted to take them on,” the GOP senators were advised to sidestep the performance of Trump. Politico had the story first.

“Note–don’t defend Trump, other than the China travel ban–attack China,” O’Donnell & Associates said in a document sent to GOP campaigns across the country.

“Because China lied about the extent of the virus, our public health officials acted late,” the document suggested that candidates claim.

At 6:15 p.m. that same day, the Facebook campaign account of Sen. Dan Sullivan adopted the consultant’s playbook, posting an item that attacked China and avoided the topic of Trump.

“Their lack of transparency and disinformation cost the United States, and the world, valuable time to prepare for this global pandemic. We must hold China accountable for their deception,” Sullivan’s campaign said.

This was the first time that his campaign account played the China card in relation to the pandemic. It’s a questionable card to play, not because China is blameless, but because Trump was heaping undeserved praise on China at a time when federal officials were pushing for disclosure about the coronavirus.

The next day, April 18, Sullivan went after China on his official Senate Twitter account, using some of the talking points from the spin doctors.

While saying that while he couldn’t reveal his sources, Sullivan said everyone should be skeptical of claims from the Chinese. He said the Chinese government isn’t transparent and that the Communist Party is mainly concerned with staying in power.

More than two weeks earlier, on the radio show of right-winger Hugh Hewitt, Sullivan said that impeachment proceedings distracted the entire federal government in January from preparing to deal with the coronavirus outbreak.

“If you look at the month of January, the entire federal government, the House, the Senate and the executive branch, were focused on impeachment,” said Sullivan. “There’s no doubt about it.”

“The fact is, it was all impeachment, all the time, in January. There’s no doubt in my mind, it took our eye off the ball on this big issue.”

While Hewitt tried to get Sullivan to agree to a major military buildup to fight China—forward funding hundreds of billions for new submarines and bombers—Sullivan didn’t reply or expound on Hewitt’s claim about China being responsible.

The comments by Sullivan about the extent of the impeachment distraction deserve scrutiny and refutation.

It may have been true that members of Congress were entirely distracted. And Trump may have been entirely distracted by impeachment, his campaign rallies and picking fights on Twitter, but members of his staff and other federal officials were not distracted.

Investigations by both the Washington Post and the New York Times demonstrate that Trump ignored repeated warnings from members of his staff in January and February and the government knew that China was hiding information and failing to cooperate.

• U.S. intelligence agencies gave more than a dozen warnings in the first two months of the year to Trump in the President’s Daily Brief, reports that “traced the virus’s spread around the globe, made clear that China was suppressing information about the contagion’s transmissibility and lethal toll, and raised the prospect of dire political and economic consequences,” the Post reported Monday.

• It took 70 days for Trump to begin to treat the coronavirus seriously after the first formal report reached the Trump administration Jan. 3. Trump consistently praised China’s handling of the virus and predicted the whole thing would disappear miraculously, while ignoring the federal officials who tried to alert him.

• On Jan. 22, Trump said he was not worried about a pandemic. “No. Not at all. And we have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. . . . It’s going to be just fine.”

• On Jan. 24, Trump said on Twitter, “China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”

• On Jan. 30, as the New York Times reported, Trump “rejected the idea of criticizing China, saying the country had enough to deal with. And if the president’s decision on the travel restrictions suggested that he fully grasped the seriousness of the situation, his response to Mr. Azar indicated otherwise. Stop panicking, Mr. Trump told him. That sentiment was present throughout February, as the president’s top aides reached for a consistent message but took few concrete steps to prepare for the possibility of a major public health crisis.”

The behavior of the Chinese government hindered the U.S. response to the virus, but so did the behavior of Trump, a fact that won’t be admitted by Sullivan and others trying to hide Trump’s egregious mistakes.

The discussion has to include the question of why Sullivan and many other members of Congress didn’t push Trump or show any skepticism, accepting bland assurances that there was little to worry about.

On Feb. 4, Sullivan said on Twitter that “I encourage Alaskans to remain calm but very vigilant. Health & Human Services Secretary Alex Azar recently said, ‘The risk to Americans remains low, and we are working to keep it that way.’”

Also on Feb. 4, Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy called on Trump to “deal with epidemic preparedness and response, before this turns into a full-blown crisis.”

So far more than 55,000 Americans have died.