EXAMPLES OF TRUMP’S POOR CORONAVIRUS “TASK FORCE”

…Trump’s poor Secretary of Treasury, Steve Mnuchin

The president’s advisers sorely need to inspire “truth to power and confidence.”

Guess what?  Here’s an article that’s not directly about President Trump.

This article is going to show that those high level advisers to the president are part of the reason the president is the way he is.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, the president seldom listens to his advisers unless he already agrees with them.

What I’m getting at is how far from reality that some of these “high level advisers” are when it comes to their common sense.

Let’s start with the White House coronavirus response coordinator, Dr. Dedorah Brix.  Ms. Brix started off on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday show being up front  by saying about Covid-19: “No state, no metro area will be spared.” But then things went downhill when she refused to answer whether the states or the federal government should take the lead on getting medical ventilators and other medical equipment to hospitals.  She refused to state yes or no whether domestic air travel should be shut down.   She also refused to answer whether the proper social distancing will continue, even through the end of April.  Like you will see, this is as it was with some of the other Trump advisers.  Her appearance left more questions than answers about just how those around Trump are dealing with the pandemic.

Next, we take on the National Economic Council Director, Larry Kudlow on ABC this same Sunday, and his comments as to how long the virus curve will continue going up. “It could be four weeks, it could be eight weeks.” Of course, as interviewer Martha Raddatz replied, it was just a few weeks ago that Kudlow was telling CNBC that the virus was actually contained. And even Kudlow then admitted, “I can’t guarantee it. I can’t wave the magic wand. I wish I could.”

Then we get the cabinet member that I have always thought was a “few bricks short of a load”.  On “Fox News Sunday," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin showed us his total lack of coronavirus knowledge.  He kicked off the interview by explaining how the coronavirus task force had kept the mercurial president from calling for a quarantine of the New York region.  But then, when he was asked if it was “realistic to open up parts of the country” by Easter, which the president had suggested, and whether doing so might in fact hurt the economy.  The treasury secretary Mnuchin then clammed up about the task force’s workings saying: “I’m going to leave that decision to the medical professionals and the president.”

Perhaps the next time the treasury secretary doesn’t feel comfortable answering basic questions, he should refuse to do Sunday political talk shows in the first place.

The only adviser that has been consistently giving us good information has been the outstanding epidemiologist, Anthony Fauci, the long-time director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.  On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Sunday show, he did not sugarcoat the situation.  He predicted “between 100,000 and 200,000” deaths (though he stressed that the number is “a moving target”). But Fauci also laid out a clear plan: “reductions in those areas like New York City,” where infection rates are already high, and “testing, identification, isolation [and] getting people out of circulation who are infected” in places where infections remain rare.

Rather than reflexively defending the administration, Fauci admitted that more could be done in getting tests, protective equipment and so on to hospitals that need them. It was, in short, a completely opposite performance from the other advisers.

If only the rest of those around the president could inspire such “truth to power” and such confidence.

Copyright G. Ater 2020