A mere eight days ago, Joe Biden was still vocally opposing President Donald Trump’s travel bans from Europe, and even China, as racist. In other words, if Biden was the president, we can’t begin to imagine how much worse things would look in American today thanks to President Biden’s refusal to keep people out from the very same places where the Chinese coronavirus rages.
Below is the timeline in China Joe’s own words. Afterwards, we will do some math and hear from Dr. Fauci.
All the way back on January 31, in reaction to the coronavirus outbreak in China, President Trump announced a travel ban of “all foreign nationals who have traveled in China within the last 14 days.” That included, obviously, Chinese citizens and anyone from any country who visited China.
Americans returning from China were put under a 14-day quarantine.
That was 50 days ago.
President Trump took that action 50 whole days ago.
That same day, Joe Biden published this tweet:
[N]ow [Trump’s] adding more countries to his list of who’s not welcome in America. It’s not who we are — and we’ll prove that when we beat Trump this November and end the ban.
Please note that Biden promised to “end the ban” — the ban that stops people from entering our country who are coming in from a country facing a massive epidemic.
The next day, Biden — who has always been cozy with China, and whose son Hunter set up a deal worth hundreds of millions with the Chinese government while traveling with his father (who was then vice president) — issued the following statement declaring Trump’s ban “racist” and “xenophobic.”
Yesterday, Donald Trump further diminished the United States in the eyes of the world by expanding his travel ban, placing new restrictions on the residents of six more nations that limit who is allowed to come to the United States.
…
Trump’s atrocious asylum and refugee policies — they are all designed to make it harder for black and brown people to immigrate to the United States. It’s that simple. They are racist. They are xenophobic.
And there is no evidence that they do anything to make us safer.
Immigrants from each of these countries and their broader diaspora communities here in the United States enrich the larger fabric of American life as our friends and neighbors and make vital contributions to our economy.
That same day, Biden published this tweet:
We are in the midst of a crisis with the coronavirus. We need to lead the way with science — not Donald Trump’s record of hysteria, xenophobia, and fear-mongering. He is the worst possible person to lead our country through a global health emergency.
Biden followed this statement up the next day with a speech in Iowa, where he again blasted Trump’s travel ban, this time as “hysterical xenophobia”:
We have, right now, a crisis with the coronavirus. This is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysteria and xenophobia – hysterical xenophobia – and fearmongering to lead the way instead of science.
On February 15, Biden again attacked Trump’s immigration restrictions:
Donald Trump’s inhumane, fear-based immigration policies are a stain on our nation. We have to get him out of the White House and ensure our laws reflect our values as a nation of immigrants.
The following month, on March 10, Biden was still lashing out at Trump’s travel restrictions as racist:
A wall won’t stop a virus. Racism won’t stop a virus. Do your job.
On March 11, Trump announced a European travel ban.
The very next day, Biden railed against the idea:
A wall will not stop the coronavirus. Banning all travel from Europe — or any other part of the world — will not stop it. This disease could impact every nation and any person on the planet — and we need a plan to combat it.
Let’s just pause for a moment to take this all in…
Incredibly, as late as March 12, a mere eight days ago, Biden opposed Trump’s travel bans.
So, without question, we can say that if Joe Biden were president right now, he would not have closed America’s borders, not even travel from Wuhan, China — not even after the virus was raging in Wuhan, China.
Let’s go to the numbers…
In 2018, nearly three million — million! — tourists from China visited the United States. That number rises every year, but let’s stick with that… Three million Chinese tourists a year means an average of 250,000 per month. That’s 8,300 per day.
And that number does not include those arriving from other countries, anyone from any country who traveled to China, who were also a part of Trump’s January 31 ban.
So, at what point would Biden have finally done the right thing and banned travel?
Well, we know through his own statements, that Biden opposed these travel bans as late as March 12. So I think we can safely say that a President Biden would not have acted any sooner than his ideological counterparts in the European Union, who did not close their borders until March 16, a mere four days ago.
So let’s do the math…
In our hypothetical world… President Biden, in an effort to “lead the way with science” and not “hysteria, xenophobia, and fear-mongering,” would have allowed — between January 31 and March 16 — at least 375,000 travelers from China into the U.S. — people who did not get into our country thanks to President Trump’s “racist” and “xenophobic” travel ban.
We can never know for sure just how much worse the Chinese virus would be right now in President Biden’s hypothetical America — we can’t know how many more Americans would be infected or dead as 375,000 tourists streamed in from a plague-infected country and unknowingly seeded themselves among us…
But we do know that universally-respected expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, an immunologist with the National Institutes of Health of the United States, believes the Trump’s travel bans — the ones Biden opposed as recently as eight days go — have “gone a long way to not seeding very, very intensively the virus in our country.”
Dr. Fauci responds to question about differences between U.S. and Italy, says @realDonaldTrump stopping travel very early from China "has gone a long way" in fight against coronavirus
"Unfortunately, Italy did not do that. They had an open border."
pic.twitter.com/bf62gVytrH— Elizabeth Harrington (@LizRNC) March 20, 2020
FAUCI: One of the things we did right, was very early, cut off travel from China to the United States. Outside of China where it originated, the countries in the world that have it are through travel. Either directly from China or indirectly from someone who went someplace and then came to that particular country. Our shutting off travel from China, and more recently travel from Europe, has gone a long way to not seeding very, very intensively the virus in our country. Unfortunately, Italy did not do that. They had an open border. They let people in, and until they really knew they were in trouble — the horse was out of the barn, and that was it.
In other words, a President Joe Biden would have let some 375,000 horses out of the barn and right into America…
Can you imagine what that would look like?
Can you imagine what American would look like right now had President Joe Biden allowed that to happen?
And if that’s not a disqualifier for the presidency, then I ask you… What in God’s name is?
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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