Woodward: Travel Restriction on China in January Was Not Trump’s Idea

Investigative Journalist Bob Woodward pushed back against President 👤Donald Trump’s claim that he faced opposition from public health experts when he restricted travel from China at the beginning of the pandemic.

Woodward touched on the portion of his new book “Rage” where it details what really led to Trump’s decision to restrict travel from China.

During an appearance on NBC’s “The Today Show,” co-host Savannah Guthrie offered a contrast of Trump’s claims about the initial travel restriction on China in comparison to the timeline of events detailed in Woodward’s book.

Guthrie noted that, according to Woodward, the restrictive policy was recommended to the president in January by some of the Trump administration’s top health experts.

Woodward noted that the claim Trump has relied upon as a defense to support his early pandemic response differs drastically from what actually happened.

“It is very different and it is essential to the understanding,” he said.

See Woodward’s remarks below:

Woodward went on to further explain the details of the travel ban including the flaw in it that, subsequently, contributed to New York state’s alarming coronavirus outbreak at the beginning of the pandemic.

“It’s not that President Trump banned travel, people coming from China to the United States,” Woodward said, adding, “He restricted it, and as we now know, there were some problems and lots of people from China instead of coming to the United States went to Europe and then came into John F. Kennedy airport in New York.”