From distraction to disaster: How coronavirus crept up on Washington

Lawmakers have ripped the administration’s bungled handling of the outbreak. But some now wonder if there’s more they could have done when it might have made a difference.

It was just hours before the start of President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial when Sen. Tom Cotton started to worry.

The Arkansas Republican had spent Martin Luther King Day weekend poring over news reports from Asia describing a new, highly infectious disease traced to a provincial city of 11 million inside China, hardening his already deeply held disdain for the Chinese Communist Party.

Cotton was struck by the way the Chinese government was putting a positive spin on its handling of the new virus, while taking increasingly drastic steps to try to contain it. “That’s when it really kind of crystalized for me,” he told POLITICO in an interview. “Those two things obviously do not match.” Continue reading.