I don’t think he lied about it, I’m just trying to cover all the bases. The idea to look at was that Trump was lying he knew CV was serious, but he was a great leader and didn’t want to cause a panic. Trump can’t seem to imagine that people know things he doesn’t, and claims to know everything that’s already widely known, so it was an idea that he would be unable to admit he didn’t know the real situation back then.
I think he’s the biggest liar I’ve ever seen, and I very much doubt that’s true, because he had to have known at the time. I’m just trying to take the high road and examine what might be true instead of automatically assume he’s wrong every time. Of course, he’s so bad that I can’t recall him actually being right, but if I denounce everything automatically, it ruins my credibility.
I think this is true (I’m guilty of it myself). It partly stems from our being insulated from direct effects of war for most of our history (compared to, say, Europeans), and partly from most of us (not all!) descending from folks who came to this continent, survived, and (eventually, many of them) thrived — the actions of optimists.
Contrast il Doofus, who had available a much more productive option for responding to the PPE shortage (invoking the Defense Production Act to rapidly increase the supply) and failed to take advantage of out of of (at best) negligence or (at worst) deliberate intent to aggravate a problem he saw as primarily damaging to Democratic constituencies.