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The coronavirus pandemic moved back to the center of the US election on Friday, when a former senior official in the White House task force turned against Donald Trump.
Olivia Troye, a former adviser to Mike Pence, alleged that Trump had called his own supporters “disgusting people” with whom he no longer had to shake hands thanks to the pandemic.
Meanwhile, Democratic challenger Joe Biden told voters late Thursday that they should “listen to the scientists, not the president” when it comes to hopes for a vaccine.
The death toll from Covid-19 in the United States is close to 200,000. The election is November 3, less than 50 days away.
Following Biden in national polls and in most swing states and in polls on who the public trusts to handle the pandemic, Trump has claimed a vaccine will be available “in a few weeks.” That stance contradicts statements by high-level health advisers, whom the president in turn has publicly doubted.
At a municipal event hosted by CNN in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Biden said: “I don’t trust the president when it comes to vaccines. I trust dr [Anthony] Fauci [the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases]. If Fauci says a vaccine is safe, she would take it. We should listen to the scientists, not the president. “
Troye, a member of the Covid task force who left the administration in the summer, came out Thursday with an exciting video in support of Republican voters against Trump, a conservative group that backs Biden.
“By mid-February, we knew it wasn’t about whether Covid would turn into a major pandemic here in the United States,” Troye said, echoing Trump’s own remarks in taped interviews with Bob Woodward for the reporter’s new book. from the Washington Post. , Rage.
“It was a question of when. But the president didn’t want to hear that because his biggest concern was that we were in an election here, and how this would affect what he considered his record of success. It was shocking to see the president say that the virus was a hoax, saying that everything is fine, when we know that this is not the truth.
Trump continues to hold campaign events with little regard for state guidelines on social distancing and masks. As Biden spoke in Pennsylvania on Thursday, the president organized a rally in another undecided state, Wisconsin, where Covid infections are emerging. In Mosinee, temperature controls were required and hand sanitizer was distributed. But the masks were optional.
Troye said that at a task force meeting, “the president said, ‘Maybe this from Covid is a good thing. I don’t like to shake people’s hands, I don’t have to shake hands with these disgusting people. ‘
“Those disgusting people are the very people he claims to care about,” Troye said. “These are the people who continue to attend his rallies today, who have total faith in who he is. If the president had taken this virus seriously, or if he had actually made an effort to say how serious it was, he would have slowed the spread of the virus. It would have saved lives. “
The surge in Covid infections, such as the one that killed former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, who attended a rally in Tulsa in June, has been linked to the Trump events. But at Misonee, at least one of the rally attendees wasn’t overly concerned.
“I think a lot of it is made up,” Lori Cates told The Guardian. “It is a ploy to take away [Trump’s] success.”
The Trump administration’s effort to find a vaccine works under the name Operation Warp Speed.
After the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Robert Redfield, told the Senate on Wednesday that it would be about a year before a vaccine was “generally available” Calling masks “the most important and powerful public health tool we have,” Trump said Redfield was “confused.”
On Thursday, Fauci tried to chart a middle path, telling Washington DC radio station WTop, “in many respects, they were both right.”
Troye spoke to The New Yorker shortly before his video was released. “What really worries me,” he said, “is if they rush this vaccine and pressure people and get something out because they want to save the elections.”
The president has also promoted dubious therapies and blamed the “deep state” for what he sees as slow progress in agencies like the federal Food and Drug Administration.
The “deep state” conspiracy theory holds that there is a permanent government of bureaucrats and operatives to thwart Trump’s agenda. Former Trump campaign manager and White House strategist Steve Bannon, a key propagator, has said the theory is “for nutters” and “none of this is true.”
Concern about political meddling in public health agencies has always been present during the pandemic. Last weekend, Politico reported that Trump appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services sought to change key reports because they would “undermine the president’s optimistic messages about the outbreak.”
On Friday, the New York Times reported that a key set of CDC guidelines on who should be tested for the coronavirus was published, despite strong objection from agency scientists.
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