A reporter asked President Donald Trump this week what he thought of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's claim that impeachment distracted Trump from tackling the coronavirus epidemic earlier.
The president gave a rambling answer but ultimately settled on a firm no.
"I don't think I would have done better had I not been impeached, OK?" Trump said. "And I think that's a great tribute to something. Maybe it's a tribute to me. But I don't think I would've acted any differently or I don't think I would've acted any faster."
Trump's response threw cold water on what was becoming a common talking point on the right. A week earlier, Henry Olsen, a very Trump-sympathetic columnist for the Washington Post, had written a column headlined, "Let's be honest. Impeachment hurt Trump's response to coronavirus." As China was locking down its cities, Olsen argued, "the White House was focused on addressing this threat to its survival, not on preparing for a threat from China that might never even materialize."
Other conservatives, including my friends and former National Review colleagues Rich Lowry and Dan McLaughlin, made similar arguments. They emphasized how fortunate we are, in retrospect, that Republicans refused to allow witnesses at the trial, or the distraction might have lasted well into February.
As a matter of analysis, this argument is plausible, perhaps even probable. As Trump repeatedly reminds us, he made a tough and controversial decision to curtail travel from China early on. That was the right thing to do. But it was only a wise decision because it bought us time to marshal resources to fight the inevitable outbreak here in the states. Then, the administration didn't use that time wisely and failed to adequately prepare.
Consider that both South Korea and the U.S. recorded their first confirmed case on Jan. 20. South Korea immediately went into overdrive with testing, social distancing and contact tracing. The U.S. did not. The fact that South Korea has the pandemic under relative control and the U.S. doesn't speaks volumes.
But the White House insists that the president always took the threat seriously.