Trump needs what he hates: experts and journalists
If the coronavirus is to be successfully contained, President Trump will have to rely on both the government experts he calls the “deep state” and the news media he calls the “enemy of the people.”
I have a hard time being optimistic that he will ask for the help he needs.
The irony would be delicious if the situation were not so serious. In China, the epicenter, the death rate from covid-19 - the disease caused by the novel virus - has reportedly been about 2 percent. Though different countries have reported different mortality rates, that figure would make the virus 20 times more deadly than the seasonal flu.
We know the virus is spreading here, as evidenced by a cluster of cases of covid-19 in the Seattle area, but we have no idea how widespread it is because we have done so little testing. As of the weekend, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had conducted only around 500 tests; health authorities in Britain, by contrast, had done more than 10,000 tests.
The number of confirmed deaths from covid-19 is rising: Washington State authorities announced four more fatalities on Monday.
Trump has spent his presidency denigrating the “permanent federal bureaucracy,” which he accuses of being unaccountable and disloyal. Now, however, he must count on longtime officials at agencies such as the CDC and the National Institutes of Health to understand this dangerous new pathogen and limit its spread. You can bash bureaucrats all you want, but sometimes you really need them.
And the federal government employs some of the best. One sterling example is Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. If there were such a thing as the “deep state,” he could be its poster child.
Fauci, a world-renowned scientist who has held his position since the Reagan administration, is best known for his work during the initial AIDS crisis. He was instrumental in discovering how HIV overcomes the body’s defenses and pointing the way toward ways to slow or halt the progression to AIDS. Fauci also developed therapies for several other rare fatal diseases and has won prestigious awards for his contributions to the field of rheumatology.
In 2008, President George W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Yet Fauci’s appearances on the Sunday talk shows this weekend were abruptly canceled, prompting concerns that he had been muzzled by the administration. Fauci explained that this was not the case.
But the alarm was understandable. When Trump put Vice President Pence in charge of the federal response to the virus, one of Pence’s first acts was to centralize the administration’s “messaging” to the public. In principle, that makes sense; mixed signals would be counterproductive. In reality, however, this administration has squandered so much credibility on Dear-Leader-style aggrandizement of Trump that it’s hard to believe that political appointees are telling the truth.
Trump’s attempts to sow distrust of civil servants could interact in particularly dangerous ways with his efforts to demonize the media in this epidemic.
The president has made a systematic effort to delegitimize the media, calling our reports “fake news” and even accusing us of treason. But now he needs citizens to follow the government’s recommendations and instructions - about handwashing, face masks, testing and the like - and this information cannot be fully disseminated except via the same news outlets Trump accuses of always “lying.”
He has no choice but to ask his followers to believe us, just this once.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Sunday that enough new and improved diagnostic kits to test 75,000 people will be distributed to hospitals. That should allow officials to detect any hidden clusters of disease, like the one currently being investigated in the Seattle area—but the government will need the media to get word out about testing protocols.
And earlier this week, Surgeon General Jerome Adams asked that healthy Americans stop buying surgical face masks, which are only useful - and necessary - for health care workers and individuals who are already sick. Adams conveyed that message on “Fox & Friends” Trump’s favorite show - but the program has fewer than two million viewers on an average morning.
To the extent that Adams’s message reaches more of the public, the conduits will necessarily include other media outlets that Trump routinely attacks and denigrates.
Obliterating long-accepted norms of public discourse has consequences. This administration has spent three years insisting on conspiracy theories, “alternative facts” and the supposed infallibility of President Trump. The White House insists on its own version of reality.
The coronavirus, apparently, didn’t get the memo.