The timeline below was posted to a FB group today, but I wanted a more visual format to show how much nonsense the “impeachment was a distraction from this serious pandemic business” story is. I cross-referenced dates in the timeline with the number of US SARS-CoV-2 infections using archived data from Johns Hopkins through 23 March and the dataset from COVID Tracking (which is current but doesn’t go back far enough to provide correlation with the impeachment dates). There is some overlap, but it’s not like Trump was completely focused on impeachment activity before 05 Feb. Campaign rallies and golfing were his choice distractions. Both of which continued well after the impeachment trial ended.
Timeline with a few additional impeachment-related events added and location info for rally and golf events:
| Date | # US Infections | Detail |
| 18-Dec-2019 | 0 | House Impeaches Trump |
| 18-Dec-2019 | 0 | Trump campaign rally – Michigan |
| 21-Dec-2019 | 0 | Trump maybe golfs – Florida |
| 22-Dec-2019 | 0 | Trump maybe golfs – Florida |
| 23-Dec-2019 | 0 | Trump maybe golfs – Florida |
| 24-Dec-2019 | 0 | Trump maybe golfs – Florida |
| 26-Dec-2019 | 0 | Trump golfs – Florida |
| 27-Dec-2019 | 0 | Trump maybe golfs – Florida |
| 28-Dec-2019 | 0 | Trump maybe golfs – Florida |
| 29-Dec-2019 | 0 | Trump golfs – Florida |
| 30-Dec-2019 | 0 | Trump golfs – Florida |
| 31-Dec-2019 | 0 | Trump maybe golfs – Florida |
| 1-Jan | 0 | Trump maybe golfs – Florida |
| 2-Jan | 0 | Trump maybe golfs – Florida |
| 3-Jan | 0 | Trump campaign rally – Florida |
| 4-Jan | 0 | Trump maybe golfs – Florida |
| 5-Jan | 0 | Trump maybe golfs – Florida |
| 8-Jan | 0 | First CDC warning |
| 9-Jan | 0 | Trump campaign rally – Ohio |
| 14-Jan | 0 | Trump campaign rally – Wisconsin |
| 16-Jan | 0 | House sends impeachment articles to Senate |
| 18-Jan | 0 | Trump golfs – Florida |
| 19-Jan | 0 | Trump maybe golfs – Florida |
| 20-Jan | 1 | First case of corona virus in the US, Washington State. |
| 22-Jan | 1 | “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.” |
| 22-Jan | 1 | Impeachment prosecution’s opening arguments and presentation of evidence |
| 23-Jan | 1 | Impeachment prosecution’s opening arguments and presentation of evidence |
| 24-Jan | 2 | Impeachment prosecution’s opening arguments and presentation of evidence |
| 25-Jan | 2 | Impeachment defense presentation |
| 28-Jan | 5 | Trump campaign rally – New Jersey |
| 30-Jan | 5 | Trump campaign rally – Iowa |
| 31-Jan | 7 | Impeachment Senate vote against calling witnesses & travel restriction from China |
| 1-Feb | 8 | Trump golfs – Florida |
| 2-Feb | 8 | Trump maybe golfs – Florida |
| 2-Feb | 8 | “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.” |
| 5-Feb | 11 | Impeachment Senate votes to acquit. Then takes a five-day weekend. |
| 10-Feb | 11 | Trump campaign rally – New Hampshire |
| 12-Feb | 12 | Dow Jones closes at an all time high of 29,551.42 |
| 15-Feb | 13 | Trump golfs – Florida |
| 19-Feb | 13 | Trump campaign rally – Arizona |
| 20-Feb | 13 | Trump campaign rally – Colorado |
| 21-Feb | 15 | Trump campaign rally – Nevada |
| 24-Feb | 51 | “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA… Stock Market starting to look very good to me!” |
| 25-Feb | 51 | “CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.” |
| 25-Feb | 51 | “I think that’s a problem that’s going to go away… They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine.” |
| 26-Feb | 57 | “The 15 (cases in the US) within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.” |
| 26-Feb | 57 | “We’re going very substantially down, not up.” Also “This is a flu. This is like a flu”; “Now, you treat this like a flu”; “It’s a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for. And we’ll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner.” |
| 27-Feb | 58 | “One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.” |
| 28-Feb | 60 | “We’re ordering a lot of supplies. We’re ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn’t be ordering unless it was something like this. But we’re ordering a lot of different elements of medical.” |
| 28-Feb | 60 | Trump campaign rally – South Carolina |
| 2-Mar | 98 | “You take a solid flu vaccine, you don’t think that could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?” |
| 2-Mar | 98 | Trump campaign rally – North Carolina |
| 2-Mar | 98 | “A lot of things are happening, a lot of very exciting things are happening and they’re happening very rapidly.” |
| 4-Mar | 149 | “If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work — some of them go to work, but they get better.” |
| 5-Mar | 217 | “I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work.” |
| 5-Mar | 217 | “The United States… has, as of now, only 129 cases… and 11 deaths. We are working very hard to keep these numbers as low as possible!” |
| 6-Mar | 262 | “I think we’re doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down… a tremendous job at keeping it down.” |
| 6-Mar | 262 | “Anybody right now, and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test. They’re there. And the tests are beautiful…. the tests are all perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good.” |
| 6-Mar | 262 | “I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it… Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.” |
| 6-Mar | 262 | “I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault.” |
| 7-Mar | 402 | Trump golfs – Florida |
| 8-Mar | 518 | Trump golfs – Florida |
| 8-Mar | 518 | “We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus.” |
| 9-Mar | 583 | “This blindsided the world.” |
| 1-Mar | 583 | Travel lockdown from Europe. |
| 13-Mar | 2179 | State of emergency declared |
| 17-Mar | 6421 | “This is a pandemic,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.” |
| 18-Mar | 7783 | It’s not racist at all. No. Not at all. It comes from China. That’s why. It comes from China. I want to be accurate. |
| 23-Mar | 42152 | Dow Jones closes at 18,591.93 |
| 25-Mar | 63928 | 3.3 million Americans file for unemployment. |
| 30-Mar | 160530 | Dow Jones closes at 21,917.16 |
| 2-Apr | 239099 | 6.6 million Americans file for unemployment. |