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Donald Trump is effectively abandoning a public health strategy for the coronavirus pandemic and is showing “a clear will to change lives for the Dow Jones,” critics say.
At the same time, however, Trump has scrapped the daily briefings from the coronavirus task force and sidelined his medical experts in favor of economic officials flooding the airwaves to urge states to reopen their businesses, even amid increasing infection rates.
Tuesday morning, before boarding Air Force One to visit a mask manufacturing medical facility in Arizona for his first long trip since the end of March, when the outbreak intensified in the US. In the U.S., Trump weighed an expected increase in deaths against the economic renaissance.
“There is no great victory, one way or another, but I will tell you where there is a victory, we are going to build a country, I did it once, two months ago we had the best economy in the history of history. world, but we’re going to do it again and that’s what we’re starting … it’s going to happen pretty quickly. “
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned in a CNN interview the night before that there will be a “bounce” of new coronavirus cases in the case of White House coronavirus task force Anthony Fauci , director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The United States if the country rushes towards a “premature” reopening of society and business.
“How many deaths and how much suffering are you willing to accept to return to what you want to be a form of normality sooner rather than later?” I ask.
And on Tuesday morning, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo warned against what he called a “compensation” for life and death by planning how and when to lift the restrictions.
“The faster we reopen, the lower the economic costs will be, but the higher the human costs will be because more lives are lost. That, my friends, is the decision that we are really making, ”Cuomo said in his daily briefing.
Critics now sharply question the Trump administration’s approach to what Fauci called “a very difficult option” weighing a death toll against the economic catastrophe.
“They have decided in a very utilitarian way that the political damage from a collapsed economy is greater than the political damage from losing up to 90,000 more Americans in June,” said Rick Wilson, a former Republican strategist. “We are witnessing the large-scale application of a kind of creepy realpolitik that is a clear will to trade lives for the Dow Jones.”
In a sign of the change, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie told CNN that the increase in deaths could be worth it if the economy reopens. “Of course, everyone wants to save as many lives as they can, but the question is, to what end, ultimately?” said Christie, a Republican who led Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential transition team. He added: “Are there ways we can … thread the needle here to allow for deaths, and will there be deaths no matter what happens?
When Trump declared a national emergency on March 13, hopes rose that, despite all the first minimization opportunities and missed testing opportunities, the federal government was finally ready to attack the crisis in full force.
Trump quickly branded himself a “wartime president” and, on March 31, grimly groomed Americans for a “very, very painful two weeks” ahead. His daily briefings from the White House coronavirus task force drew comparisons to campaign rallies, sometimes for more than two hours, but he also featured respected experts Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci, armed with graphics and science.
However, on April 23, Trump pontificated on the injection of disinfectant in patients with coronavirus, which caused disbelief and mockery worldwide. The briefings would never be the same again and over the past week they have been replaced by special events heralding an economic return.
On Sunday, when Trump held a virtual Fox News town hall titled “America Together: Returning to Work” at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, he was not accompanied by Birx and Fauci, but by Vice President Mike Pence and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
The president has been prompted by Fox News hosts who question whether the virus is worse than the common flu, doubt the value of physical distance and they argue that the economic shutdown, which has cost at least 30 million jobs, shows that the cure is worse than the problem.
On Saturday, a Washington Post report suggested Trump had been encouraged to move from the health crisis to economic struggle by an internal White House analysis suggesting that the daily death toll would peak in mid-April and then it would be significantly reduced. His “decision-making has been largely guided by his reelection prospects,” the Post added.
But predictions of the death toll from the University of Washington Institute for Health Assessment and Measurement, a model favored by the White House, rose Monday from 72,000 to 134,000 in early August because, he said, states are relaxing physical distancing too soon.
Now, critics say, Trump seems willing to shrug off losses as collateral damage, paying more attention to his campaign manager, Brad Parscale, than Birx or Fauci.
Wilson, author of Everything Trump Touches Dies, warned: “They may end up making the situation worse with a second wave in the summer and a third wave in the fall that we will end up with a set of economic challenges far worse than if we had taken our bitter medicine and we stayed closed until we passed the first part of this crisis. ”
The grim news is still inevitable, but the administration hopes its economic message offers at least some counterprogramming.
Joe Lockhart, a former White House press secretary said: “Almost out of necessity, they are changing their strategy. They are pinning all their hopes of reopening the economy, using their economic spokesmen and hoping that the American public will have a high tolerance for the count. of deaths. Sounds terrible to say and even worse to do.
“I think they won’t see much of the scientists anymore, the news is so bad, and they’re just going to turn a blind eye to the fact that what they’re doing is going to kill more people, because ultimately, the way that the president makes decisions is what is good for his reelection. “
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