Trump and Fauci speak, but Trump’s attention stays elsewhere

He continues to insist that schools reopen in a matter of weeks, undermining his administration’s advice on how to do it safely and eliminating health experts who are encouraging some states to re-close.

And instead of convening daily briefings with the administration’s coronavirus task force or regularly speaking to its health experts, Trump in meetings has cast prolonged criticism of his diminished position and complained that he is not credited for his work. initial aimed at fighting the virus, people familiar with the matter said.

Other issues

In addition to vague promises that a vaccine will arrive soon, an issue he has focused more intensely on privately, attendees said, instead of containing current increases, Trump has devoted his time to other issues this week.

He has convened several sessions focused on law enforcement at the White House, including a round table on Monday during which participants circled the table to share their positive experiences with police officers, including a woman who they stole the bag.

He traveled two days later to Georgia, not to discuss the rapidly increasing number of cases in the state, but a setback in regulations meant to stimulate infrastructure projects (the Atlanta mayor later accused him of violating the law by not wearing a mask at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport).

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany insisted Thursday that the president “is doing many things at once” and has other things besides the coronavirus to spend his time. She suggested it will seem more focused on the pandemic next week.

“I think he will hear more about what we will do next week. He is working hard,” he said. “It is doing many things at once. That is the good thing about the Trump administration.”

However, several people close to the president, including several top officials within the White House, believe that the only way to reverse the Trump campaign will be to tackle the only problem that it seems to resist facing: the out-of-control pandemic that still plagues much of the nation. .

“Brad is not the one getting the message out,” said a senior White House official. “Brad is not the one who refuses to wear a mask. He (Trump) is not focused. Everyone has told him that. Nothing has changed.”

Even 18% of Republicans said in the poll that they disapproved of how Trump is handling the coronavirus and is actively hurting efforts to contain it.

“Trump’s strongest letter, the economy, ripped apart by a murderous virus, may have left the president with no problem or feature to avoid defeat,” said poll analyst Tim Malloy, “no leadership, no empathy, no foreign policy, and certainly not its handling of Covid-19. “

No cohesive strategy

However, in the face of those numbers, which, while now getting worse, have remained negative for months, Trump has not shown his willingness to adopt a more coherent strategy to deal with the virus or at least allow the country’s leading public health experts. take charge.

While Trump agreed to wear a mask during a visit to the Walter Reed National Medical Center last weekend after an extensive request from his advisers, he continues to largely ignore the realities of the growing pandemic in other areas.

He has continued to push for them to reopen, even as experts like Fauci encourage states with further increases in cases to return to previous phases, which include restrictions on large meetings. Trump has rejected the recommendations of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about reopening schools, calling them too expensive and strict, and dismissed efforts to keep classrooms closed as political “nonsense”.

His drive to reopen in the fall has not necessarily convinced the nation’s largest districts; In both New York City and Los Angeles, authorities have said students will not return to classrooms in the fall.

However, even apart from schools, the administration continues to undermine CDC, once considered the world’s preeminent public health agency. Trump this week retweeted a former game show host who claimed that “everyone is lying” about the pandemic: “The CDC, the media, the Democrats, our doctors, not all, but most, who are being told that we trust. “

On Tuesday, the Department of Health and Human Services said hospital data on coronavirus patients will now be redirected to the Trump administration instead of being sent to the CDC first.

The move could make the data less transparent to the public at a time when the administration is minimizing the spread of the pandemic and threatens to undermine public confidence that medical data is presented without political interference.

After declaring himself a “wartime president” in March and briefly adopting a sober tone by warning Americans of a terrible couple of weeks, Trump had abandoned the mantle in mid-April, insisting that the economy of the The country would reopen and suggesting during one of its last televised coronavirus briefings that ingesting disinfectant could be a potential treatment.

It was around this time that Trump last attended a formal session of the coronavirus task force, a panel whose influence with the President has dramatically decreased even as the pandemic sets records for the daily case count.

While Trump continues to regularly hear about the state of the outbreak from Vice President Mike Pence, who heads the task force and has been traveling to hot spots, he receives no periodic reports from Fauci or other health experts. Instead, the information from the working group is compiled and released to others to inform the President.

The amount of information absorbed or internalized depends on the day and mood of the president, say people familiar with the meetings. While Trump clearly acknowledges the increase in cases, he has remained adamant that further evidence has led to what appears to be a new out-of-control outbreak. He has made long complaints at several meetings that his response to the pandemic is being negatively covered. And he has lamented the circumstances he now finds himself, insisting that his fate is “terrible”.

Vague remarks

When Trump emerged at the Rose Garden on Tuesday for what some of his advisers hoped would be a majestic appearance announcing new actions against China while contrasting his record with rival Joe Biden, he instead issued a set of sometimes barely consistent comments who only vaguely addressed how he faced the pandemic.

Trump has also complained at meetings about Fauci, the 79-year-old director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who repeatedly corrected the president’s statements or offered less optimistic views on the pandemic.

After Trump voiced his concerns about Fauci in a series of interviews, suggesting that he had been wrong about certain things at the start of the pandemic, attendees took the public comments as a sign that they should also question Fauci’s record, including through distribution of a list of his past statements to journalists over the weekend.

The reaction was swift, including from several of the President’s main allies, who said it was both self-destructive and a waste of time to publicly weaken one of the administration’s most trusted public health voices.

“Entering a contest with Dr. Fauci about whether or not he was right doesn’t move the ball forward,” Senator Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, an informal adviser to the president, said Tuesday.

However, even when Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows was organizing a détente, even during a long meeting with Fauci in his West Wing office, another senior aide, Peter Navarro, was presenting an eight-paragraph tirade against Fauci. on the editorial page of USA Today.

The newspaper said Wednesday that they had requested the article directly from Navarro in response to their own editorial that defended Fauci. They also said, after publication, that some of the claims were misleading and did not meet their fact-checking standards.