As Trump retreats, coronavirus surges
America’s pandemic failures worsen as the president shifts his focus to re-election, economy
WASHINGTON — Six months after the novel coronavirus was first detected in the U.S., a record surge in new cases is the clearest sign yet of the country’s historic failure to control the virus — exposing a crisis in governance extending from the Oval Office to state capitals to city councils.
President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly downplayed the virus, sidelined experts and misled Americans about its dangers and potential cures, now finds his presidency wracked by an inability to shepherd the country through its worst public-health calamity in a century.
The dysfunction that has long characterized Trump’s White House has been particularly ill-suited for a viral outbreak that requires focus and steady leadership.
As case numbers began quickly rising again, Trump has held rallies defying public health guidelines, mused about slowing down testing for the virus, criticized people wearing masks and embraced the racially offensive “kung flu” nickname for a disease that has killed nearly 125,000 Americans.
A similarly garbled message for the country has also been put forward by the president’s top aides and other senior administration officials, who contradict one another on a daily basis.
On Friday, Vice President Mike Pence used the first White House coronavirus task force briefing in almost two months to praise Trump’s handling of the virus and cast aside concerns about a record spike in new infections.
Later Friday, the United States recorded more than 40,000 new coronavirus cases, its largest one-day total.
It was the latest example of whiplash from the Trump administration, which has struggled to put forward a consistent message about the pandemic.
While public health experts urge caution and preventive measures such as mask-wearing and social distancing, Trump, Pence and other top aides repeatedly flout their advice, leaving confused Americans struggling to determine whom to believe.
“They’re creating a cognitive dissonance in the country,” one former senior administration official said. “It’s more than them being asleep at the wheel. They’re confusing people at this point when we need to be united.”
This portrait of a nation in crisis — and its failure to contain an epic pandemic — is based on interviews with 47 administration officials, lawmakers at the national and state level, congressional staff, federal and local health officials, public health experts and other officials involved in the bungled and confused response.
America’s position as the world’s leader in coronavirus cases and deaths is in large part the result of human error, and the still-rising caseload stands as a reminder of the blunders that have characterized the national response. Trump’s actions, and his position in the Oval Office, make him a central figure in any assessment of the country’s handling of the outbreak.
As the White House task force scaled back its meetings and stopped its public briefings in May and June, Trump seized the national spotlight and used it to shift the country’s focus from the virus to an economic comeback he branded the “TRANSITION TO GREATNESS.”
Trump’s public mentions of the coronavirus declined by two-thirds between April and early June. When he did discuss the pandemic, it was often to float misinformation about treatments, masks and testing — science-defying views that have been embraced by his supporters and Republican lawmakers.
The White House has blocked Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, from some appearances that he has requested to do in recent weeks.
White House aides have argued that TV interviewers often try to goad Fauci into criticizing the president or the administration’s approach, and that Fauci is not always good about “staying on message,” in the words of a senior administration official.
As local officials struggled to enforce stay-at-home orders and other restrictions, the virus continued to circulate throughout a country riven by partisan politics and devoid of a national public health strategy, says Max Skidmore, author of a book on presidential leadership during health crises.
“We’re the only country in the world that has politicized the approach to a pandemic,” he said.
Now, COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, is advancing at an accelerated pace in the U.S. even as other countries reopen their economies after getting their outbreaks under control. European diplomats are poised to approve an agreement that will reopen the European Union to travel from many countries but not American tourists, because the coronavirus is still raging in the United States.
In contrast, states from Arizona to Florida are pausing or reversing their attempts to reopen their economies.
The new peak in cases, coming so quickly after the first and with just months to go before a presidential election and an impending flu season, has alarmed public health experts and the president’s political allies.
“These epidemics are going to be hard to get under control,” said Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and an informal adviser to the Trump administration. He said he expects deaths to soon climb to more than 1,000 per day again.
The president has dramatically scaled back the number of coronavirus meetings on his schedule, instead holding long meetings on polling and endorsements, his reelection campaign, the planned Republican National Convention in Jacksonville, Fla., the economy and other topics.
Trump’s intense focus on his campaign comes as he has been sliding in public polling and trailing Democratic rival Joe Biden, who is winning support from voters who disapprove of the president’s handling of the pandemic and the accompanying recession.
Some Republican officials have tried to advise the president to focus more intently on managing the public health crisis at hand, arguing that doing so would help his political standing — and theirs — while also speeding along the economic recovery.
While Fauci has been sidelined, economic advisers such as trade adviser Peter Navarro and Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, have been given a more prominent public role. They have often used the platform to provide false assurances that the recent surges are under control.
“We’re going to have hot spots. No question. We have it now,” Kudlow said last week. “And, you know, Texas and parts of the South, the Carolinas, Arizona. We just have to live with that.”
Others without a background in public health, including Trump’s son-inlaw, Jared Kushner, have played an outsized role in guiding the federal response. Just last month, Kushner told others involved in the response that the virus was essentially under control and that there would be no second wave, a former administration official said.
We’re the only country in the world that has politicized the approach to a pandemic.” Author Max Skidmore
JACKSON, Miss. — Amid continuing national protests against racial injustice, Mississippi state lawmakers have paved the way for legislation to remove the Confederate symbol from the state flag.
On Saturday, the Republican-led House of Representatives and the Senate voted by a two-thirds majority to clear the path for a measure that would remove the current flag and replace it with a new design free of Confederate iconography.
After the votes were announced in each chamber, applause broke out. Earlier in the day, Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican, has indicated that he will sign the bill to change the flag if one reaches his desk, a shift from his previously held position that voters should decide whether to change the flag via referendum.
Lawmakers on Saturday delivered impassioned speeches for and against abandoning the Confederate symbol, which has endured previous challenges. Many described the day as historic, invoking the founding fathers, their own family histories and future generations in explaining their votes.
Rep. Edward Blackmon Jr., a Democrat, who is black, said that he had overcome the feelings he had seeing the flag growing up, but that it represents a painful history. He said his children and now his grandchildren have had questions about what it represents and called for a flag that would stir pride in all of the state’s residents — nearly 40 per cent of whom are black.
“It ought to be something that we all feel a sense of pride that when we see it, we know that that’s about us,” he said. “Not just some of us.”
House Speaker Pro Tem Jason White, a Republican, argued forcefully against keeping the flag, saying it had come to be viewed as a symbol of hate.
“By changing our flag, we don’t abandon our founding principles,” he said. “We embrace them more fully by doing what is right. We’re not moving further away from our founding fathers’ visions. We’re moving closer to them. We’re not destroying our heritage; we’re fulfilling it.”
Sen. Chris McDaniel, a Republican, one of the most vocal opponents of the measure, argued that attempts to change the flag were part of an effort to challenge the founding values of the country, warning that the American flag was next.
Saturday’s vote was a procedural measure necessary so that legislators could consider a bill changing the flag. That measure, which requires a simple majority rather than a two-thirds vote, seems likely to pass.
The current proposal, which could be debated as early as Sunday, calls for immediate removal of the existing flag and the creation of a commission to design a new one.
The new version would go before voters for approval in November.