Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration's Response to the Pandemic T [Paperback]

Instant #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller

Now in paperback and with a new afterword, Washington Post journalists Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta's definitive account of the Trump administrations tragic mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the chaos, incompetence, and craven politicization that has led to more than a half million American deaths and counting.

Since the day Donald Trump was elected, his critics warned that an unexpected crisis would test the former reality-television hostand they predicted that the president would prove unable to meet the moment. In 2020, that crisis came to pass, with the outcomes more devastating and consequential than anyone dared to imagine.?Nightmare Scenario is the complete story of Donald Trumps handlingand mishandlingof the COVID-19 catastrophe, during the period of January 2020 up to Election Day that year. Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta take us deep inside the White House, from the Situation Room to the Oval Office, to show how the members of the administration launched an all-out war against the health agencies, doctors, and scientific communities, all in their futile attempts to wish away the worst global pandemic in a century.?

From the initial discovery of this new coronavirus, President Trump refused to take responsibility, disputed the recommendations of his own pandemic task force, claimed the virus would just disappear, mocked advocates for safe-health practices, and encouraged his base and the entire GOP to ignore or rescind public health safety measures. Abutaleb and Paletta reveal the numerous times officials tried to dissuade Trump from following his worst impulses as he defied recommendations from the experts and even members of his own administration. And they show how the petty backstabbing and rivalries among cabinet members, staff, and aides created a toxic environment of blame, sycophancy, and political pressure that did profound damage to the plƒ3