Former US president Donald Trump had seriously considered sending covid-positive American tourists to Guantanamo Bay island, a report by the Washington Post has revealed.
According to the report, before the coronavirus crisis blew up in the US, a meeting was held, in February 2020, at the Situation Room of the White House to debate whether to allow US citizens that had travelled to coronavirus-hit countries to return and receive care.
“Don’t we have an island that we own?” the president reportedly asked White House officials.
“We import goods,” Trump said. “We are not going to import a virus.”
Stunned, his advisors quickly brushed aside the suggestion when it was brought up a second time, afraid of the backlash that would erupt over isolating Americans on the same base where terrorism suspects are held.
Such insights, among others, inside Trump’s handling of the crisis in the early days, are revealed in a book by Washington Post journalists Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta, titled “Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History”.
