SIDESHOW with W. House team as prez blabs

160,000 deaths nationwide and stark new evidence that many Americans’ jobs may never return.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, on a conference call with governors on Monday, said action by Congress remains the administration’s “first choice.”

Negotiations over the latest coronavirus bill shifted with the arrival of Mark Meadows, the president’s new chief of staff, who is widely seen as a counterforce to Mnuchin.

Pelosi has said repeatedly that Trump and the Republicans don’t grasp the gravity of the situation facing the nation.

She and Schumer have put their latest compromise offer on the table, dropping their $3 trillion-plus package of relief by $1 trillion to $2.5 trillion, and asking the White House to do the same, raising its $1 trillion proposal to at least $2 trillion. That was rejected last week as talks collapsed.

“We’re living through the greatest economic crisis since the Depression and the greatest health crisis since the Spanish Flu in 1918,” Schumer said Monday as the Senate opened. “So it should not be hard to convince Republicans in the White House to provide urgent and necessary relief.”