Coronavirus pandemic
The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

New book offers fresh details about chaos, conflicts inside Trump’s pandemic response

At one point, the president mused about transferring infected American citizens in Asia to Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba

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June 21, 2021 at 7:00 a.m. EDT
President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and the coronavirus task force deliver a briefing about the pandemic last year. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, as White House officials debated whether to bring infected Americans home for care, President Donald Trump suggested his own plan for where to send them, eager to suppress the numbers on U.S. soil.

“Don’t we have an island that we own?” the president reportedly asked those assembled in the Situation Room in February 2020, before the U.S. outbreak would explode. “What about Guantánamo?”