This week the death count in the United States was the highest it has been, reaching nearly 2,000.
Datashows that Coronavirus is affecting African Americans disproportionately.
By the end of the week, Jobless claims were over 16 million. And here is a good piece on how the federal bureaucracy is struggling to follow up on its commitments made in the stimulus bills.
On Monday leaked transcripts and recordings of the Navy Secretary on board the Roosevelt: “Acting Navy secretary Thomas Modly told sailors Monday that the ousted captain of an aircraft carrier afflicted by the coronavirus either was “too naive or too stupid to command a ship,” or that he leaked a letter raising concerns about the service’s handling of the crisis to the media, Navy officials acknowledged.” Modly resigned on Tuesday.
Trump fired the IG responsible got overseeing the $2 trillion stimulus.
On Tuesday Wisconsin had a major election day where most had to vote because the courts did not allow an extension of absentee or mail in voting.
This week a number of publications published histories of the Trump Administration’s early response to the coronavirus.
Here is the Washington Post: “In reality, many of the failures to stem the coronavirus outbreak in the United States were either a result of, or exacerbated by, his leadership.”
The New York Times history is here: “These final days of February, perhaps more than any other moment during his tenure in the White House, illustrated Mr. Trump’s inability or unwillingness to absorb warnings coming at him. He instead reverted to his traditional political playbook in the midst of a public health calamity, squandering vital time as the coronavirus spread silently across the country.”
Frum wrote a long piece detailing all the ways Trump is responsible for the current crisis: “The utter unpreparedness of the United States for a pandemic is Trump’s fault. The loss of stockpiled respirators to breakage because the federal government let maintenance contracts lapse in 2018 is Trump’s fault. The failure to store sufficient protective medical gear in the national arsenal is Trump’s fault. That states are bidding against other states for equipment, paying many multiples of the pre-crisis price for ventilators, is Trump’s fault. Air travelers summoned home and forced to stand for hours in dense airport crowds alongside infected people? That was Trump’s fault too. Ten weeks of insisting that the coronavirus is a harmless flu that would miraculously go away on its own? Trump’s fault again. The refusal of red-state governors to act promptly, the failure to close Florida and Gulf Coast beaches until late March? That fault is more widely shared, but again, responsibility rests with Trump: He could have stopped it, and he did not.”
Meanwhile, Trump continues giving 1-2 hour daily press briefings. Even some Republicans think the daily briefings are not good for Trump: “White House allies and Republican lawmakers increasingly believe the briefings are hurting the president more than helping him. Many view the sessions as a kind of original sin from which all of his missteps flow, once he gets through his prepared script and turns to his preferred style of extemporaneous bluster and invective…. [and] that the White House was handing Mr. Biden ammunition each night by sending the president out to the cameras.”
Tom Nichols on Trump’s press conferences: “In his daily coronavirus briefings, Trump lumbers to the podium and pulls us into his world: detached from reality, unable to feel any emotions but anger and paranoia. Each time we watch, Trump’s spiritual poverty increases our own, because for the duration of these performances, we are forced to live in the same agitated, immediate state that envelops him. … With cable news constantly covering the pandemic, he seems to be going through withdrawal. He needs an outlet for his political glossolalia, or his constantly replenishing reservoir of grievance and insecurity will burst its seams.”
This point is confirmed by reporting in the New York Times: “One described him as “subdued” and “baffled” by how the crisis had played out. An economy that he had wagered his re-election on was suddenly in shambles. He only regained his swagger, the associate said, from conducting his daily White House briefings, at which he often seeks to rewrite the history of the past several months.”
Personal Log: Our governor closed all state parks this week. My daughter and I relied on them for long walks, either in the wooded trails of the Eagle Rock nature reserve or around the reservoir. I drove down the road that cuts through the middle of the reserve and saw all the parking spots blocked with gates, yellow tape and orange barrels, signs saying This Facility is Closed. However, many cars found two places to park and were crammed together more than they would have been if all the trail heads were open.
—
Trump’s Approval Rating: 44.4%
Total U.S. COVID-19 Cases / Deaths: 492,416 / 18,559
Here is a New York Times piece on why testing was delayed for over a month: “Private-sector tests were supposed to be the next tier after the C.D.C. fulfilled its obligation to jump-start screening at public labs. … But Dr. Hahn took a cautious approach. He was not proactive in reaching out to manufacturers, and instead deferred to his scientists, following the F.D.A.’s often cumbersome methods for approving medical screening. … Even though researchers around the country quickly began creating tests that could diagnose Covid-19, many said they were hindered by the F.D.A.’s approval process. The new tests sat unused at labs around the country.”
Over the weekend Trump floated the idea of banning travel out of New York and New Jersey. Then: “President Trump said Saturday night that he would not impose a quarantine on New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, but would instead issue a “strong” travel advisory for the region to be enacted by the governors of the three states.”
On Sunday Trump also extended the social distancing guidelines for another month, dropping his Easter deadline from last week, and acknowledged for the first time that the deaths will be in the hundreds of thousands: “on Sunday, his mood seemed somber as he conceded the need for another month of collective pain. Citing figures from his advisers that showed that as many as 200,000 people could die from the virus even if the country took aggressive action to slow its spread, Mr. Trump said the restrictions must continue, even if it meant more sacrifice in the days ahead. “During this period, it’s very important that everyone strongly follow the guidelines. Have to follow the guidelines,” Mr. Trump told reporters…”
On a Monday call with governors who said they need more tests Trump said: “I haven’t heard about testing in weeks,” the president said. “We’ve tested more now than any nation in the world. We’ve got these great tests and we’re coming out with a faster one this week.” Reiterating his point, Mr. Trump added, “I haven’t heard about testing being a problem.” … The president has recently taken to pointing to the volume of tests that have been administered — a misleading figure because, according to health experts, the more relevant figure is how many people are being tested per capita. In that regard, the United States still lags well behind other nations like South Korea.”
On Tuesday Fauci and Birx said in a briefing that the virus could kill 100,000 and 240,000 Americans, in spite of the social distancing measures. Trump said: ““I want every American to be prepared for the hard days that lie ahead. We’re going through a very tough few weeks,” Mr. Trump said, later raising his two weeks to three.”
Here is some analysis by Peter Baker of the Times based on the Tuesday press conference: “A crisis that Mr. Trump had repeatedly asserted was “under control” and hoped would “miraculously” disappear has come to consume his presidency, presenting him with a challenge that he seems only now to be seeing more clearly. … Despite comparing it to the ordinary flu and saying for weeks that it would pass, the president insisted on Tuesday that he understood all along that it could be a killer of historic proportions…. The president did not explain on Tuesday why testing was so slow, nor did he explain why he waited to recommend canceling large events, closing businesses and schools and limiting group gatherings until after governors began ordering it themselves. Nor did he explain why he publicly declared that the country could reopen as early as Easter, only to reverse himself days later, if he understood all along how bad the situation could get.
Mr. Trump asserted that had he not blocked many travelers from China, the United States would have most likely reached closer to the maximum projected death toll of up to 2.2 million. “When you look at it could have been 2.2 million people died and more if we did nothing, if we just did nothing,” he said, then he and the country “have done a great job.” In effect, he seemed to be setting up the argument that any death toll below that will be a validation of his handling of the crisis.”
Some of the ventilators that Trump said the federal government has been holding and will deliver are defective: “what federal officials have neglected to mention is that an additional 2,109 lifesaving devices are unavailable after the contract to maintain the government’s stockpile lapsed late last summer, and a contracting dispute meant that a new firm did not begin its work until late January.”
The captain of a Navy ship who wrote a letter requesting his crew be allowed to evacuate amid an onboard Coronavirs outbreak was fired on Thursday and now has the virus himself: “According to reporting: Adm. Michael M. Gilday, the chief of naval operations, privately urged against dismissal and argued that, per usual Navy procedures, an investigation into what went wrong on the Roosevelt should be allowed to play out. But the acting Navy secretary, Thomas B. Modly, overruled the Navy’s top admiral, saying Captain Crozier had cracked under pressure.”
On Friday the CDC started recommending Americans wear face masks in public.
Here is a New York Times piece outlining Kushner’s role in coordinating the White House repose.
The only Trump golf course that remains open is in Virginia. The Secret Service signed a $45,000 contract this week for rented golf carts at the resort to protect a “dignitary.” The contract runs through September.
In other news: Late Friday night Trump fired the intelligence community’s Inspector General, Michael Atkinson. Atkinson was responsible to deciding that the Ukraine whistleblower’s complaint was legitimate and should be sent to Congress.
Personal Log: I took my first masked trip out doors on Saturday. I had to wait in a line at Home Depot and Whole Foods meant to stagger the number of people in the store. We all tried to stand six feet apart. About half of us had masks. The city closed the South Mountain Reservation, but the kid and I got one last hike in the woods in the morning.
In the 2-3 weeks when the COVID-19 crisis became a reality for most Americans, President Trump saw a significant shift upward in his approval rating. He is currently at 45.8% approval in the fivethirtyeight.com aggregate of all approval polls. This is the highest he has ever been in his presidency, with the previous record of 44.8% in the second week after his Inauguration. On March 13, 2020 he declared a national emergency, and by March 21 he had hit 45.8% approval. He’s currently enjoying a bump of 3.5% points. (Note: I’m writing this in the first week of April, and things will undoubtedly change by the day.)
Trump has now had nine approval ratings bumps in his presidency. I define a bump with the following two criteria:
an increase of 2% points or more
the increase is sustained over a distinct period of time without significant interruption
The bumps range from 2% to 3.7% points (average 2.8%), and from 2 to 10 weeks (average 4.3 weeks). See the specs in the table below:
Trump’s Approval Bumps: A Short History
The first bump was Trump’s largest–3.7%–in January 2017 and was the results of the traditional inauguration honeymoon period. It ended as soon as it began, sliding into his first approval dip in Week 3, due in part to the Flynn firing and the travel ban fiasco.
He would not see another bump until the end of summer, but it was not due to anything positive he or his administration did. For two weeks at the end of August 2017 Trump was badly damaged by the fallout over the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally and his “both sides” reaction to it. He reached the lowest approval of his term up to that point–36.9%–and so the four weeks that followed amounted to an approval bump because his approval ticked up to a still-low 39.4%. The same thing happened with his third bump starting in December 2017. A Flynn guilty plea and Trump endorsing the accused pedophile Roy Moore for Senate in Alabama, who then lost, brought Trump’s approval to what is still the lowest of his presidency–36.4%. By the end of January 2018 his approval floated back up to 39.5%, which meant a 3.10% bump.
The fourth bump occurred soon after, perhaps as a result of the end of Trump’s first government shutdown, which Trump and his media tried to bill as the “Schumer Shutdown.” Here is how a recent article described it: “Senate Democrats took a politically risky stand, shutting down the government to insist on protections for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants. Gleeful Republicans saw the obstruction strategy as a huge blunder and pounded the Democrats, who caved after only a few days of sharp attacks and cut a deal to reopen.”
The fifth bump is harder to explain because the news cycles were not filled with positive news for him, and he was not particularly low–40.3%–by the standards of his own approval rating, as high as he’d been since the start of the term. Over four weeks from April to May 2018, he reached 42.4%. I attribute this bump to what I call Trump’s 42% homeostasis rule.
This is the period when Trump attained 42% and basically stayed there for the rest of his term (as of this writing in April 2020). Before Week 67 his average approval was about 40%; after that week it was about 42%. The psychic shock of Trump had worn off; we became used to him. We also learned, rightly or wrongly, that the normalcy that returns after an extreme Trump action, for example firing of the FBI director, means that worst case scenarios don’t always materialize and our fears are not always justified. In this way Trump became normalized. And in the new normal, about 42% of the country are willing to say they approve of his job performance. So this fifth approval bump, occurring from April 22 to May 19, 2018, when there was a lot of Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels news, is when this normalization showed up in the approval rating.
The next two bumps are also a result of the 42% homeostasis rule. In the fall of 2018, during the build up to the Midterms, it took 10 weeks for Trump to climb from 39.9% to 42.9%. He had gotten that low due to a bad summer of news about Omarosa, Paul Manafort and snubbing John McCain’s funeral, among other mini scandals. He was also active on the stump in these weeks trying to paint the House democrats as friends to criminals and illegal immigrants, and some of his increase may have been generated by this contrast.
Similarly the seventh bump saw Trump rise from 39.3% to 43.7% in the winter of 2019. This bump corresponded with the end of the second and more protracted government shutdown.
It would be a full year before Trump enjoyed another approval bump. The eighth bump–41.8% to 43.8%–corresponded with the Senate Impeachment trial. While he took a significant approval hit in the weeks after his Ukraine scheme was first revealed in October 2019, the trial itself brought a series of oscillations, slight upticks and downticks. The Senate constituted a significant uptick probably due to the fact that Trump’s legal team could mount a public defense for the first time in the process.
The Coronavirus Bump
In the latter half of February 2020, Trump was solidly in the 43% range when the Coronavirus lockdowns began. Then after a two-week, 1% point dip, his ninth approval bump began, from 42.3% to 45.8%.
Here are some stats to put this bump in perspective:
Size: 2nd largest out of 9 (only the Inauguration bump was more)
Time Scale: 2nd quickest out of 9, jumping 2.6% in one week, and the full 3.5 over two (only the Inauguration bump was faster)
Start Point: 1st Best. All the previous bumps, including the inauguration, started from a lower baseline approval rating. This is relevant because it is harder to get a bump when your approval is higher, and easier when it is lower.
Duration: ??? We are in the third week of this bump. The average Trump approval bump sustains itself for about a month, with the exception of the Midterm bump that lasted three and a half months. As of this writing in the first week of April, the approval bump has stalled in its third week, sticking at 45.8% for two weeks in a row. Whether this rating will continue to increase or decline in the next few weeks will tell us more about the true shape of this ninth approval bump.
Read below for some other commentary on why the bump is happening now.
Democratic strategist tells me via email that while Trump’s “approval is up, particularly his approval on coronavirus response. BUT, the uptick is heavily driven by Democrats who (A) are not going to stay with him in the long haul; (B) likely driven by folks who WANT him to succeed, not people who actually think he is doing well.”
One GOP pollster I spoke with this week argues that we should think of this not as a ‘rally’ around Trump, but to see it as more about latitude. That is, voters who aren’t normally fans of the president (Democrats and many independents), are currently giving the president some ‘latitude’ to navigate this unprecedented crisis. However, there’s no evidence in the data, said this person, that they are turning into Trump voters.
And according to this Thomas Edsall piece, pols show danger signs for Trump:
A March 10-15 NBC News/Commonwealth Fund poll asked 1,006 adults “How much do you trust the President Trump to provide information about the coronavirus epidemic?” A majority, 53 percent, said they either had no trust at all (40 percent) or little trust (13 percent). 30 percent said they either completely trust (16 percent) or mostly trust (14 percent) the president.
“Trump’s overall approval rating drops among people who are more worried about catching the coronavirus, report severe local economic impacts, say their lives have been especially disrupted or know someone who’s caught the virus. He also has lower approval in states with higher per capita infection rates. … the results suggest that as the crisis deepens, the risks to views of his performance likely rise.”
This Vox piece points out that Trump’s bump is small compared to what world leaders and governors are earning right now, and in comparison with what presidents have historically earned during crises: “The most striking thing about Trump’s approval rating bump, however, is simply that it’s very small. Compared to other politicians in the US and abroad, he’s very bad at playing a unifying figure. As a politician, that weakness is offset by the way the Electoral College overweights his coalition. But given the public opinion equivalent of a layup, he’s falling far short of the hoop.”
Update: April 25, 2020 – The Cornavirus rally lasted only three weeks, beginning roughly March 15 and lasting until about April 4. The approval rating rose for two of those weeks, and then stayed stuck at the high point of 45.8% for the third week, before dropping. It is his third briefest bump, with six of the nine lasting more than four weeks.
The Senate’s relief bill failed on Sunday and again on Monday. Democrats objected to corporate give-aways and corruption concerns that Trump would give millions of dollars to his own resorts.
Trump changed his tone yet again on Monday, now pivoting to the idea that the economic harm is worse than the virus and that after 15 days the country will reopen. He set a date of April 12, Easter.
According to the Washington Post: “Trump predicted “we’re going to be opening our country” in a shorter time frame than months. He announced that the administration was developing new protocols to allow local economies outside of what he called “hot spots” of the coronavirus spread to resume activity and would make a decision at the conclusion of the current 15-day period.”
The Washington Post’s David Ferenhtold reports that the shutdown has closed six of Trump’s seven biggest earning properties: “That threatens to pull Trump in opposite directions, because the strategies that many scientists believe will help lessen the public emergency — like strict, long-lasting restrictions on movement — could deepen the short-term problems of Trump’s private business, by keeping doors shut and customers away.”
Also as Trump’s Sunday COVID-19 press conference: “Romney’s in isolation? Geeeeee – that’s too bad.” By Tuesday Romney reported that he tested negative but will remain quarantined on doctor’s advice.
Here is a New York Times media piece on how FOX News has handled the crisis: “There, for two crucial weeks in late February and early March, powerful Fox hosts talked about the “real” story of the coronavirus: It was a Democratic- and media-led plot against President Donald J. Trump. Hosts and guests, speaking to Fox’s predominantly elderly audience, repeatedly played down the threat of what would soon become a deadly pandemic.”
The Senate approved the $2 trillion relief package on Wednesday: “The legislation would send direct payments of $1,200 to millions of Americans, including those earning up to $75,000, and an additional $500 per child. It would substantially expand jobless aid, providing an additional 13 weeks and a four-month enhancement of benefits, and would extend the payments for the first time to freelancers and gig workers. The measure would also offer $377 billion in federally guaranteed loans to small businesses and establish a $500 billion government lending program for distressed companies…”
Here is a summary of some of the bill’s fine print and how it works to help businesses. For example: “loans from the federal government worth up to 2.5 times the firm’s monthly payroll that will not have to be repaid if the company uses them to keep paying employees during any coronavirus shutdowns.”
Of the $500 billion business loan program: “Rather than trying to negotiate that figure down, Democrats instead negotiated to have strings attached to it. Instead of giving the Trump administration broad discretion to make the loans, Schumer and Pelosi said there will likely be a new inspector general in the Treasury Department specifically to oversee these funds, as well as a congressional oversight panel to examine how the money is being used. Schumer’s office also announced they secured a provision that will “prohibit businesses controlled by the President, Vice President, Members of Congress, and heads of Executive Departments from receiving loans or investments from Treasury programs.” The children, spouses or in-laws of lawmakers and executive officials also cannot receive these loans.”
By Friday the House approved and Trump signed the 2 trillion dollar stimulus bill.
Although the bill provided strict oversight to keep Trump from giving money to his and his allies’s businesses, he overrode that oversight in a signing statement: “Immediately after signing the historic $2 trillion coronavirus aid package, President Trump sought to curb oversight provisions in the bill by asserting presidential authority over a new inspector general’s office.
There was confusion out of the White House about the federal government ordering GM to produce more ventilators: “The White House had been preparing to unveil the G.M.-Ventec joint venture this week, and had hoped to announce that upward of 20,000 ventilators would be available in weeks, and that ultimately 80,000 would be produced. But the company complained that FEMA would not commit to spending the $250 million or so it would take to retool the factory. And with FEMA still evaluating a $1.5 billion proposal from those companies, Mr. Trump got angry at news reports that described the bureaucratic maneuvering. He soon blamed G.M.”
Also this: “Mr. Kushner focused on the medical equipment shortages, working with the National Association of Manufacturers, the Business Roundtable and groups of former and current executives who gathered under the hashtag #StopTheSpread. Some of those executives now say they are operating on their own and no longer coordinating with the White House because they could not get clear signals about what the government wanted, or when.”
A report from mayors of 200 major cities lists their needs: “More than 90 percent — or 192 cities — told the conference that they did not have an adequate supply of face masks for police officers, firefighters or emergency workers. In addition, 92 percent of cities reported a shortage of test kits to diagnose who has contracted the virus — a problem Mr. Trump has said in recent days was all but solved — and 85 percent said they did not have a sufficient supply of ventilators available to health facilities.
Roughly two-thirds of the cities said they had not received any emergency equipment or supplies from their state, the report said. And of those that did receive state aid, nearly 85 percent said it was not enough to meet their needs.
In total, the conference tabulated that cities needed 28.5 million face masks, 24.4 million other items of personal protection equipment, 7.9 million test kits and 139,000 ventilators.”
Here is some harrowing reporting from Tuesday at one New York City hospital: “Elmhurst, a 545-bed public hospital in Queens, has begun transferring patients not suffering from coronavirus to other hospitals as it moves toward becoming dedicated entirely to the outbreak. Doctors and nurses have struggled to make do with a few dozen ventilators. Calls over a loudspeaker of “Team 700,” the code for when a patient is on the verge of death, come several times a shift. Some have died inside the emergency room while waiting for a bed.
A refrigerated truck has been stationed outside to hold the bodies of the dead. Over the past 24 hours, New York City’s public hospital system said in a statement, 13 people at Elmhurst had died.”
Peter Wehner warns about Trump: “the coronavirus pandemic may lead to a rapid and even more worrisome psychological and emotional deterioration in the commander in chief. … As one person who consults with the Trump White House on the coronavirus response put it to me, “He has chosen to imagine the worst is behind us when the worst is clearly ahead of us. As the health-care and economic crises worsen, Trump’s hallmarks will be even more fully on display. The president will create new scapegoats. He’ll blame governors for whatever bad news befalls their states. He’ll berate reporters who ask questions that portray him in a less-than-favorable light. He’ll demand even more cultlike coverage from outlets such as Fox News. Because he doesn’t tolerate relationships that are characterized by disagreement or absence of obeisance, before long we’ll see key people removed or silenced when they try to counter a Trump-centered narrative. He’ll try to find shiny objects to divert our attention from his failures.”
Here is another report from a day in a New York City hospital. Among many other harrowing details: “The emergency room phone rang again. It was a man who lived down the street, offering handmade masks. “Are you selling them or donating them?” Dr. de Souza asked. Donating. She took his number and thanked him. The hospital has received gifts of gloves, food and a brown bottle with a mysterious liquid concocted by a local artisanal deodorant maker, which said it could be used to disinfect face shields. For now, that would be put aside.”
And this: “Dr. de Souza dreads that possibility, haunted by accounts of Italian doctors denying lifesaving resources to older adults or providing inadequate care at overrun hospitals. “I’m asking myself if that’s where we’re going,” she said on Wednesday night. Some patients who were screened and went home have since returned with difficulty breathing, needing to be put on ventilators. “It’s getting really, really more difficult every day.””
Here is a report about job vacancies in the Trump administration that are adding to the breakdown in government response. One of many examples: “One example is the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is legally meant to back up the nation’s health care system in an emergency. On Thursday, the Office of Inspector General at the department released a report detailing red flags in its preparedness for the crisis. The secretary, Robert L. Wilkie, has no experience in emergency management… Mr. Wilkie recently fired his second in command, who had worked in past disasters, and his head of emergency preparedness retired.”
3.3 million people filed for unemployment insurance this past week, a record number.
Personal Log: We kept our daughter home this week, and by Wednesday the governor ordered that day care centers can only remain open to serve first responders starting April 1. You see a lot of kids and parents outside riding bikes and walking. I’ve seen more dads pushing strollers in these two weeks than I have ever seen here or anywhere. The nature reservation is also full of families. Some of them keep their sidestepped distance from you as you pass, but most don’t.
Our Trump-supporting Red State relatives are now taking the virus seriously, including following their states social distancing guidelines.
Here is a “Complete List of Trump’s Attempts to Play Down Coronavirus” from January to March.
Early in the week, German officials seemed to confirm reports that the Trump Administration attempted to secure exclusive ownership over a vaccine produced by a German company.
The Washington Post reports that of the four federally operated vaccine labs: “two of the sites are taking no role, while the other two expect to conduct small-scale testing of potential coronavirus vaccines.”
On Monday there was a change in tone and urgency from the White House, Trump in particular. Based in part on a British model that says 2.2 million people could die in the United States.
Here is an account of how the White House culture of infighting has shaped the response so far: “Senior aides battling one another for turf, and advisers protecting their own standing. A president who is racked by indecision and quick to blame others and who views events through the lens of how the news media covers them. A pervasive distrust of career government professionals, and disregard for their recommendations. And a powerful son-in-law whom aides fear crossing, but who is among the few people the president trusts.”
On Wednesday Trump authorized the Defense Production Act, but it is unclear that the administration is using those powers to produce and transport more medical equipment: “people familiar with the administration’s actions say it is still trying to figure out how industry supply chains operate, which companies could produce additional products and what kinds of subsidies it may need to offer. And without the Defense Production Act, the government will lack the ability to channel these supplies to areas that need it most — or to persuade companies to act quickly and without regard for their profits.
“As reported cases of the virus in the United States have soared, Mr. Trump, who is known to recruit input from a variety of outside advisers, has been getting conflicting advice. The proliferating number of private sector voices with direct access to the president and his top advisers — notably his son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner — has resulted in a chaotic process. The president’s advisers say they see the role of the federal government as a facilitator, as opposed to the chief producer or a national governor. They have tried to encourage states to get by with what they can, suggesting there will be support from the federal government but that this should not be the first option.
ProPublica reported that Senator Burr saved millions of dollars by selling stock just before the markets crashed, and that he knew the COVID-19 was more dire that he was saying publicly: “Burr’s Feb. 13 selling spree was his largest stock selling day of at least the past 14 months, according to a ProPublica review of Senate records. Unlike his typical disclosure reports, which are a mix of sales and purchases, all of the transactions were sales. His biggest sales included companies that are among the most vulnerable to an economic slowdown. He dumped up to $150,000 worth of shares of Wyndham Hotels and Resorts, a chain based in the United States that has lost two-thirds of its value. And he sold up to $100,000 of shares of Extended Stay America, an economy hospitality chain. Shares of that company are now worth less than half of what they did at the time Burr sold.” Some have accused him of insider trading.
Burr issued a statement saying he has asked the ethics committee to investigate.
At a Friday press conference, Trump was asked by an NBC reporter “What do you say to Americans who are watching you right now and are scared?” Trump’s response: “I say that you’re a terrible reporter, that’s what I say. It is a bad signal that you are putting out to the American people. You want to get back to reporting instead of sensationalism. Let’s see if it works. I happen to feel good about it. Who knows. I have been right a lot. Let’s see what happens.”
The Washington Post reported a good summary of how intelligence reports from January and February informed leaders about the threat of the virus and how Trump did not listen: “Donald Trump may not have been expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were — they just couldn’t get him to do anything about it,” this official said. “The system was blinking red.”
This New York Times piece details how the virus is a challenge that Trump’s defensive style is not equiped to handle: “Mr. Trump’s performance on the national stage in recent weeks has put on display the traits that Democrats and some Republicans consider so jarring — the profound need for personal praise, the propensity to blame others, the lack of human empathy, the penchant for rewriting history, the disregard for expertise, the distortion of facts, the impatience with scrutiny or criticism. For years, skeptics expressed concern about how he would handle a genuine crisis threatening the nation, and now they know.
“Aides have long understood that Mr. Trump needs to hear support for his decisions, preferably described in superlatives. He often second-guesses himself, prompting advisers to ask allies to tell him he made the right call or go on Fox News to make that point in case he might be watching.
“Over the last week, as Mr. Trump has faced ever more draconian and expensive options, Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior adviser, sought to coax him into action by using bits of praise in news coverage or from other officials as a motivator, according to people familiar with the discussions.Officials have learned that the president craves a constant diet of flattery, which they serve up during daily televised briefings. Vice President Mike Pence makes a point of repeating it day after day, sometimes repeatedly in the course of a single briefing. “Mr. President, from early on, you took decisive action,” he said during one. Other advisers have followed suit.”
There was also an effort by Trump and his media this week of re-branding the coronavirus as the Chinese or Wuhan virus. David Frum: “by revving up hate among their supporters against China, Trump and Fox can redirect those supporters’ rage from the dangerous target it might otherwise find: the trusted political and media figures who lied and lied and lied to them, exposing those supporters to disease and death for their own crass ends. Hate China, not me!
“While Trump, Fox, and Carlson try to redirect the anger of the people they betrayed, it’s worth noticing something strikingly absent from the speeches and writings of this administration and its Trump-line network: a word of sympathy or compassion for the thousands of Americans getting sick and dying on this president’s watch, as a result of this president’s neglect of his duties. They’re not capable of such language. They gain power by targeting outsiders. A virus is the ultimate outsider, but it’s not a very satisfying target for rage. Only human beings will do, human beings marked in some way as different: by nationality, by ethnicity, by race.”
In Other News:
On Wednesday Ignatius reported on concerns in the National Security community that Grennell was purging professionals. One of the details he reported on was this. Russell Travers is acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center: “A half-dozen intelligence veterans told me it is crucial that Travers remain in his job.”
On Thursday he reported that Travers just lost his job. Christopher Miller was appointed to replace Tavers as director. Travers is allowed to stay on as Miller’s deputy. “An intelligence source told me that Miller received a call about 10 p.m. Tuesday from the White House, asking if he would take the job…. The move will add to concerns within the U.S. intelligence community, and among its partners abroad, that Trump is continuing a purge of what he views as disloyal subordinates at the ODNI, FBI and other spy agencies.”
Former intelligence chiefs wrote and signed an op-ed in the Washington Post to decry to removals of careen officials: This is not just about protecting a few senior officers. These unceremonious removals send a damaging message across the intelligence community. Every current officer sees that speaking truth to power in this administration is an immediate career-killer. Every young recruit will conclude that joining the intelligence community is little different from signing up for any other politicized element of the federal bureaucracy. Countless more talented young Americans will decide that federal service, indeed public service, is not a worthy calling.
Personal Log:
We are in the first week of schools being closed, and working from home. Word came that one of our school’s staff members is being tested for the virus, and that results could take six days. By Sunday that test came back positive and the network said two other staff members were also infected. Our two year old has been going to daycare. Few kids are still going, and staff takes their temperatures before entry. Parents are not allowed beyond the front office. By Sunday we decide not to risk sending her.
A relative is self-quarantining because someone working in her building had the virus. Another relative (Trump supporter from a red state) said they did not plan to cancel their travel plans to the British Isles (assuming the travel ban there is lifted by the end of April) and that talks of a lock down was “democrats” propaganda.
State Department told Americans not to go on cruise ships, despite Trump’s disagreement with that policy: “The decision came after President Trump resisted requests from administration officials to publicly urge older travelers to avoid cruise ships and plane travel, saying he thought it would harm those industries…”
On Tuesday the health officials in the administration seemed to pivot to telling people that there will be more infections and people need to change behaviors. Trump: ““Just stay calm — it will go away,” he said, but there is no scientific assessment to back that up.” He also floated the idea of a payroll tax holiday through the election to Republican Senators, who were cool to the idea. It would cost $700 billion.
According to reporting by Coppins, Trump’s spin machine is gearing up to blunt the political blowback from COVID-19: “The administration’s response to the outbreak has drawn some comparisons to that of the autocratic regimes in China and Iran, where information about the virus was tightly controlled to the detriment of the local populations. But what Trump has actually shown is that he doesn’t need to silence the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or censor the press to undermine politically inconvenient information about a public-health crisis—he can simply use his presidential bullhorn to drown it out…. Trump supporters have been warned incessantly not to trust mainstream journalistic coverage of the issue. When the market tanked earlier this week, the president blamed it on “fake news.” When White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham appeared on Fox & Friends, she condemned the media for using the virus “as a tool to politicize things and to scare people. Meanwhile, Trump’s right-wing media allies are working to minimize the perceived dangers of the coronavirus. “Put it in perspective,” Sean Hannity told his Fox News audience this week. “Twenty-six people were shot in Chicago alone over the weekend. I doubt you heard about it.””
Despite that, a member of Trump’s taskforce, Anthony Fauci, is contradicting Trump’s talking points with blunt talk: “I mean, people always say, well, the flu does this, the flu does that,” Fauci said. “The flu has a mortality of 0.1 percent. This has a mortality rate of 10 times that. That’s the reason I want to emphasize we have to stay ahead of the game in preventing this.”
Mid-Week
Trump addressed the nation from the Oval Office Wednesday night. He tried to be upbeat, saying that our economy and preventive measures will protects us, and that the virus is affecting foreign nations worse than here: “The virus will not have a chance against us,” Trump said. “No nation is more prepared or more resilient than the United States.”
Reviews of the speech were generally bad. Frum: He offered no guidance or policy on how to prevent the spread of the disease inside the United States. Should your town cancel its St. Patrick’s Day parade? What about theaters and sporting events? Schools and colleges? Nothing…. There was one something in the speech: a ban on travel from Europe, but not the United Kingdom. It’s a classic Trump formulation. It seeks to protect America by erecting a wall against the world, without thinking very hard how or whether the wall can work. The disease is already here. “
Then Frum explains the psychology of the situation: “He has no care or concern for others; he cannot absorb the trouble and suffering of others as real. He monotones his way through words of love and compassion, but those words plainly have no content or meaning for him. The only thing that is real is his squalid vanity. This virus threatens to pierce that vanity, so he denied it as long as he could. What he refuses to acknowledge cannot be real, can it? And even now that he has acknowledged, he still cannot act, because he does not know what to do. His only goal now is to shove blame onto others. Americans have to face that in the grip of this epidemic, the Oval Office is for all practical purposes as empty as the glazed eyes of the man who spoke from that office tonight.”
Turns out at least four key details Trump said were not accurate: “Trump’s speech contained at least two errors and a significant omission. He said the travel ban would apply to cargo; it did not. He said health insurance companies would waive patients’ co-payments for coronavirus testing and treatment; industry officials later clarified that they would waive payments for testing only. And he did not fully explain the details of his travel restrictions, leaving out the fact that U.S. citizens would be exempt.”
In the Washington Post: “Trump — who believed that by giving the speech he would appear in command and that his remarks would reassure financial markets and the country — was in “an unusually foul mood” and sounded at times “apoplectic” on Thursday as he watched stocks tumble and digested widespread criticism of his speech, according to a former senior administration official briefed on his private conversations.”
End of Week
The CDC released a report of worst case estimates if no mitigation happens: “As many as 200,000 to 1.7 million people could die.”
Hospitals are already becoming overwhelmed. One major concern is estimates suggest hospitals may need over 740,000 ventilators when they only have 160,000 on hand currently: “The biggest, most dreadful thing we might face is rationing or triaging who gets ventilators,” said Gabe Kelen, the director of the Office of Critical Event Preparedness at Johns Hopkins University. “I really hope we never have to make these kinds of life-and-death decisions.”
The House passed an emergency aid bill on Friday, and Trump gave a Rose Garden press conference where he declared a national emergency, saying we are in “a new phase.”
During the Friday press conference, Trump was asked if he took responsibility for the lack of testing so far. He said “I don’t take responsibility at all.” This prompted Jack Goldsmith to write in a Twitter thread: “This episode, more than any other to date in the Trump presidency, reveals the vital importance of leadership in our democracy, and the woeful absence of it now.”
Here is a good summary of how Trump, with Kushner working behind the scenes, oversold the Google testing plan: “The president’s effort to sell the website as a significant response to an urgent public health crisis came amid a national outcry over the administration’s repeated failures to deliver on promises to quickly expand access to testing for the virus. The disconnect between Mr. Trump’s exuberant comments and the project’s more modest expectations was the latest example of the president exaggerating, overselling or making wholly inaccurate statements about his administration’s response to the virus, even as facts on the ground contradicted his rosy assessments of progress.”
Here is the Washington Post’s story on the Administration’s response: “The problem is no one is sure who is in charge,” a senior administration official said. “Unless someone comes to you and says, ‘I was with the president five minutes ago,’ and you know they’re telling the truth, getting irreversible direction is a little difficult.”
In Other News
A federal court rules that Congress can have un-redacted grand jury information from the Mueller investigation: “Courts must take care not to second-guess the manner in which the House plans to proceed with its impeachment investigation or interfere with the House’s sole power of impeachment.”
There was a rocket attack on American bases in Iraq, leaving several military wounded.
Personal Log: By midweek it was clear that this was going to be the last normal week, and by Friday even that level or normalcy was gone. In the morning, thick homework packets were rushed into students’ hands. Charter schools announced closings throughout the day. We stood in the office around one computer to watch Trump’s afternoon press conference. It was hard to stay focused on finishing out the week’s work items. Friday evening the superintendent sent out a robocall that announced all of Newark Public Schools would be closed for two weeks, until March 30. By Saturday afternoon the mayor announced the first confirmed COVID-19 case in Newark. And the governor of West Virginia, where there are no confirmed cases, closed all schools indefinitely. Throughout the weekend, people were taking to social media to either scold or scare people from going out to bars and restaurants. There is a sense that authorities will soon direct us to stay in our houses.
Trump spoke with the press from the CDC on Friday, in which he said he did not want to evacuate a cruise ship off of California because it would cause the tally of Covid-19 patients in the US to double: “I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault.”
According to Politico: “For six weeks behind the scenes, and now increasingly in public, Trump has undermined his administration’s own efforts to fight the coronavirus outbreak — resisting attempts to plan for worst-case scenarios, overturning a public-health plan upon request from political allies and repeating only the warnings that he chose to hear…. Interviews with 13 current and former officials, as well as individuals close to the White House, painted a picture of a president who rewards those underlings who tell him what he wants to hear while shunning those who deliver bad news. For instance, aides heaped praise on Trump for his efforts to lock down travel from China — appealing to the president’s comfort zone of border security — but failed to convey the importance of doing simultaneous community testing, which could have uncovered a potential U.S. outbreak.”
“As the outbreak has grown, Trump has become attached to the daily count of coronavirus cases and how the United States compares to other nations, reiterating that he wants the U.S. numbers kept as low as possible. Health officials have found explicit ways to oblige him by highlighting the most optimistic outcomes in briefings, and their agencies have tamped down on promised transparency. The CDC has stopped detailing how many people in the country have been tested for the virus, and its online dashboard is running well behind the number of U.S. cases tracked by Johns Hopkins and even lags the European Union’s own estimate of U.S. cases.”
But Trump has added to that disorganization through his own decisions. Rather than empower a sole leader to fight the outbreak, as President Barack Obama did with Ebola in 2014, he set up a system where at least three different people — Azar, Vice President Mike Pence and coronavirus task force coordinator Debbie Birx — can claim responsibility. Three people who have dealt with the task force said it’s not clear what Birx’s role is, and that coronavirus-related questions sent to her have been rerouted to the vice president’s office.
In response, Pence’s office said it has positioned Birx as the vice president’s “right arm,” advising him on the response, while Azar continues to oversee the health department’s numerous coronavirus operations.
According to ABC news: “The White House overruled health officials who wanted to recommend that elderly and physically fragile Americans be advised not to fly on commercial airlines because of the new coronavirus, a federal official told The Associated Press.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention submitted the plan this week as a way of trying to control the virus, but White House officials ordered the air travel recommendation be removed…”
Trump replaced Mulvaney as chief of staff with Mark Meadows on Friday. Although it was soon revealed that Meadows put himself in self quarantine due to possible contact with someone who may have been infected.
The CDC announced that Americans need to prepare for the disruptions that Coronavirus will bring: As of “Tuesday, the United States has just 57 cases, 40 of them connected to the Diamond Princess, the cruise ship overwhelmed by the coronavirus after it docked in Japan. Those patients are in isolation in hospitals, and there are no signs of sustained transmission in American communities.”
On Wednesday Trump gave a Coronavirus press conference and named Pence as the person in charge of the US response.
From the New York Times, and other newspapers, Thursday night: “Federal health employees interacted with Americans quarantined for possible exposure to the coronavirus without proper medical training or protective gear, then scattered into the general population, according to a government whistle-blower who lawmakers say faced retaliation for reporting concerns.”
At a rally in South Carolina on Friday, Trump suggested the coronavirus fear mongering was a “new hoax” by the democrats to undermine him, linking it with the Mueller Report”: “The Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. They’re politicizing it,” he said. “They don’t have any clue. They can’t even count their votes in Iowa. No, they can’t. They can’t count their votes. One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia.’ That did not work out too well. They could not do it. They tried the impeachment hoax.” Then Trump called the coronavirus “their new hoax.”
Friday saw the largest stock market drop since 2008, based on virus related fears of an economic downturn.
According to the New York Times: “Sixty-five cases of the virus have been reported in the United States, but until this week, all of the cases could be explained by overseas travel or contact with someone who had been ill. The three new cases on Friday, and a case earlier in the week, in California, were the first in the United States where the cause was mysterious and unknown…”
On Saturday the CDC announced the first death from the virus, a man in Washington state.
In Other News
A three judge panel ruled that the House cannot compel Don McGahn to testify since Trump told him not to.
Roger Stone was sentenced to three years in jail on charges stemming from the Mueller investigation.
Here is Wheeler on Barr’s role in the Stone case: “The whole scandal probably led ABJ to tailor her comments to address it. On top of making clear how outrageous Stone’s obstruction was, she also alluded to the tweets of the President. She ended her statements by saying, “He was not prosecuted, as some have claimed, for standing up for the president. He was prosecuted for covering up for the president.” She backed that by noting Stone’s comment to Randy Credico that he, Stone, couldn’t take the Fifth because it would hurt the President. This establishes a legal record that Stone is going to prison to protect Trump — far stronger than what went in for Scooter Libby, who was also going to prison to protect his superiors.”
On Tuesday Trump pardoned or commuted 11 famous white collar criminals. Here is a list.
Intelligence officials warned the Congress that Russia was again interfering in the presidential election: “The day after the Feb. 13 briefing to lawmakers, the president berated Joseph Maguire, the outgoing acting director of national intelligence, for allowing it to take place, people familiar with the exchange said. Mr. Trump was particularly irritated that Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the leader of the impeachment proceedings, was at the briefing.”
According to the Washington Post: “Five days later, Trump announced that Richard Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany and a presidential loyalist, would step in as the new acting director of national intelligence. Maguire was told to vacate his office at the DNI’s headquarters in Virginia by 10 a.m. the next morning, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.”
Trump is now installing political loyalists in the National Security Council, as well as reducing the number of members.
On Tuesday: “Senior Justice Department officials intervened to overrule front-line prosecutors and will recommend a more lenient sentence for Roger J. Stone Jr.” The original prosecution team had recommended 7-9 years but that was downgraded to: “the government defers to the Court as to what specific sentence is appropriate under the facts and circumstances of this case.” This came after Trump tweeted that Stone was being treated unfairly in sentencing.
Four prosecutors on the Stone case resigned due to this intervention.
According to the New York Times: “Mr. Barr and his lieutenants intervened on Tuesday hours after Mr. Trump assailed the original sentencing recommendation of seven to nine years in a middle-of-the-night Twitter eruption. The president congratulated Mr. Barr on Wednesday “for taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have even been brought” and said prosecutors “ought to apologize” to Mr. Stone. But numerous legal scholars say that Mr. Trump has shredded norms that kept presidents in check for decades, undermining public trust in federal law enforcement and creating at least the perception that criminal cases are now subject to political influence from the White House.”
This article has a good tick-tock of the decision making process: On Monday, several people familiar with the matter said, Mr. Shea told the prosecutors that he wanted a lower sentence, reminding them that they had discretion to deviate from the guidelines. But three of the four prosecutors threatened to quit the case, so Mr. Shea acquiesced until Mr. Barr and the deputy attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen, overruled him on Tuesday.
As Lawfare points out, this episode casts a new light on the DOJ’s decision last month to lower Flynn’s sentencing recommendation from 0-6 months jail time to probation, for which no explanation was offered.
Here is Marcy Wheeler on this: “Stone was silent, until the time that the Probation Office provided the sentencing range for the crimes that was built in to the way that Mueller charged this just over a year ago. That is, by charging Stone with witness tampering, Mueller built in the possibility that Stone would be facing the steep sentence recommended yesterday. And that steep sentence may have been envisioned not as the sum of what Stone’s actual actions entailed — certainly every single warrant save the last four showed probable cause that Stone had done far more, but rather as leverage to get Stone to tell what he knows about Trump’s involvement in all this.”
On Thursday Barr gave an interview to ABC in which he said Trump’s tweets made it “impossible for me to do my job” and that “I’m not going to be bullied or influenced by anybody.”
John Kelly is publicly speaking out against Trump, the Ukraine scheme, and the firing of Vindman: When Vindman heard the president tell Zelensky he wanted to see the Biden family investigated, that was tantamount to hearing “an illegal order,” Kelly said. “We teach them, ‘Don’t follow an illegal order. And if you’re ever given one, you’ll raise it to whoever gives it to you that this is an illegal order, and then tell your boss.’”
