Washington, D.C. — The United States remains at the global center of the coronavirus crisis with more than 330,000 people infected and more than 10,000 deceased. Yet even as reports emerge showing that the Trump administration wasted months of critical preparation time leading up to the pandemic, the administration continues to threaten Americans’ health coverage in the federal courts and propose deep cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security—despite the president’s promise not to cut these programs. Over the next decade, the Trump administration’s budget proposal would spend $1.5 trillion less on Medicaid, $25 billion less on Social Security, and $845 billion less on Medicare.
Now, the Center for American Progress Action Fund is releasing a new video in a social media campaign to educate Americans about the actions and broken promises of the Trump administration that could worsen the spread and devastation of COVID-19, especially as experts predict that more than 240,000 lives could be at risk. The campaign is telling stories of Americans such as Corky Wattles, a single mother from Ann Arbor, Michigan, who believes that cuts to these programs would have a negative effect on aging and low-income families during the coronavirus outbreak.
“Trump promised, ‘Won’t cut Social Security, won’t cut Medicare.’ Those were empty promises. He’s doing everything he said he wouldn’t do,” Wattles said in the video. “I have days of total fear because of what’s happening in our country. And if I were to have a medical catastrophe, I would literally have to make a choice, and honestly my priority would be to protect my daughters future, not mine.”
Despite ongoing criticism for his claims that the coronavirus would “disappear” and his suggestion that the “risk to the American people remains very low,” President Trump continues to spread misinformation about the impact of the pandemic, including at the White House’s coronavirus task force briefings, which some believe have morphed into a public relations strategy to paint a rosier picture of the administration’s handling of the epidemic before a prime-time TV audience. Wattles says that despite the Trump administration’s revisionist rhetoric, she still believes that her family is very much at risk.
“I think we’re at serious risk,” she says. “This president thinks that he knows more than everybody and everything. But you have to be able to trust in others’ perspectives and wisdom, and because of his ego, we could very well be on the verge.”
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