She accurately told the New York Times story about the pressure campaign.
Troy, who served as Pence’s chief of staff with the White House Coronavirus Task Force for months before leaving the Trump administration last month, said the situation was a “nightmare.”
“Unfortunately, this was an attempt, you know, at a time where I would be confused, where junior staff would be assigned to find different data for charts to show that the virus is not bad for a particular population, age or demographic.” “Troy, Pence’s former homeland security adviser, told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Monday.
Troy confirmed an incident in June in which he and his junior staff, pressured by Pence’s chief of staff Mark Short, tried to block the CDC from finding data on Covid-19 that would better support President Donald Trump’s view that Covid-19 A little scary. For children and those schools should be reopened.
“I think it puts these task force members and doctors in a very challenging position,” Troy said, describing what was going on behind the scenes.
“I think you’ve seen the president’s statement from the beginning, ‘Everything’s fine. Everything’s fine. It’s time to get back to normal. Let’s get the economy back on track.’
“You need to open schools,” Trump told governors. When in reality that is not the case you need to try to make everything feel right. ‘I think it happened because his response broke down along the way, he had to say nothing but the truth,’ Troy said.
Dr. Peter Hotez, Dean of Tropical Medicine and a Vaccine Specialist at Baylor College College of Medicine, calls it a “deliberate disinformation campaign.”
“This is one of the most influential components of the disinformation campaign and the anti-science campaign, presented by the White House,” Hotez said.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics and Children’s Hospital Hospital Association, more than 7,587,000 children in the United States have tested positive for Covid-1 for the first time since the onset of the coronavirus epidemic earlier this year, with a 1% increase in cases between September and September. 3 and 17 September.
Redfield is in a difficult position
Troy said he believes CDC chief Dr. Robert Redfield had a particularly difficult time finding a balance in politics and what scientists were finding out about the coronavirus epidemic.
“I’ve seen Dr. Redfield present all the evidence at the CDC with what scientists and experts have said and trying to figure out how to explore this political landscape.” And all the doctors were telling him. “
Trump publicly opposed Redfield on several occasions just a week ago after Redfield testified at a Senate hearing about a possible Covid-19 vaccine timeline. The president said Redfield had made a “mistake” and was “confused” when he said the vaccine would not be available until next summer.
Troy said he refrained from criticizing members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force because he saw a struggle during the summer between economics and efforts to balance Trump’s agenda of reopening schools with communicating the deadly dangers of the epidemic.
“I think it puts these task force members and doctors in a very challenging position. I saw them struggle first on a daily basis.”
One week later, before reversing the guideline, the CDC abruptly changed its guidelines regarding testing of asymptomatic coronavirus patients.
U.S. health and human services communications officials recently pushed for a change of language in the weekly science reports released by the CDC so as not to undermine Trump’s political message, a federal health official told CNN several weeks ago. Redfield later replied that “scientific integrity at any time” of these reports had been compromised.
But she declined to say whether she talked about the problems she had seen with Pence. Cuomo asked him that Pence was also told to remain silent about the dangers for children if schools reopened too soon.
“Everyone has a boss and unfortunately for Vice President Pence, his boss is Donald Trump,” he said.
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