• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, September 9, 2020

Content company Portal A joined forces with a team of filmmakers to produce the just-released documentary “American Pathogen,” which chronicles Donald Trump’s catastrophic mishandling of the COVID-19 crisis.

The filmmaking team includes Nate Houghteling (cofounder, executive producer at Portal A), Sarah Sherman (former producer at The Atlantic), Seamus McKiernan (former writer at Player’s Tribune and HuffPost), and Pierce Wilson (documentary editor and animator).

The film is narrated by award-winning actor Jeffrey Wright (“Boardwalk Empire,” “Quantum of Solace”) and features extensive interviews with former CDC staff, Obama administration officials, leading medical experts, and historians.

View the film here.

The film is basically a passion project of Houghteling and the Portal A team, with pro-bono contributions from the other producers involved in the effort.

“With the deluge of news about COVID-19 and the gaslighting on social media, it’s easy to lose sight of what actually happened,” says Houghteling. “If you look at the facts and consider how this administration made the wrong decision at every turn, it’s staggering.”

Here’s one damning quote in the film from Juliette Kayyem, former Assistant Secretary Department of Homeland Security:

“This was a president seeing the warning signs of a pandemic 9/11 and telling the American public the opposite, telling them to go on with their lives, telling them it was contained, telling them that they didn't need to change their behavior...to me is the malfeasance that's unique to this administration's response.”