Donald ‘Didn't Know People Died from the Flu,’ Which Killed His Grandfather Frederick
President Wilson shut up the press and locked up political foes as he dealt with a war and a public health crisis. Trump, so far, only talks about it.
In May 1918, Frederick Trump—Donald’s paternal grandfather—was taking an afternoon stroll with his young son when he suddenly announced that he felt too ill to continue, and needed to retire to his bed.
One day later, Frederick died at home, having succumbed to a case of pneumonia that would later be identified as a complication of the “Spanish flu.”
The president’s grandfather, in fact, was one of the first domestic casualties of the world’s worst modern pandemic, which ultimately killed millions.
The death toll was undoubtedly worsened by the efforts of President Woodrow Wilson’s administration to talk down the health risk.
Sound familiar?
Not to Trump, apparently, who in his visit to the CDC in Atlanta on Friday said, hours after this story was first published, that 36,000 people a year die from the flu, which he compared to the coronavirus.
Trump went on: “I never heard those numbers. I would’ve been shocked. I would’ve said, ‘Does anybody die from the flu?
I didn’t know people died from the flu.’"
Here’s the family (and American) history that Donald didn't know:
With World War I raging, the British, French and German governments downplayed the virus’s spread, fearing negative press might hurt the war effort.
Spain, unengaged in the fighting and watching from the sidelines, reported honestly on the disease, leading to the false impression that the virus originated in the country, hence its misleading name.
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