Tag: Pence chief of staff

Pence chief of staff made key decision that paved way for masks to be politicized: new book

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In 2020 Marc Short, the chief of staff to then-Vice President Mike Pence, made a fateful decision that paved the way for the politicization of wearing masks. Had he chosen differently there’s no question countless lives could have been saved.

Short, who once served as the executive director of the far right Young America’s Foundation, “focused on the political and economic implications of the coronavirus response and approached many public health decisions by considering how they would be perceived,” The Washington Post reveals. That report comes from a deep-dive into the Trump pandemic response detailed in the new book, “Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History,” by Washington Post journalists Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta.

In possibly the most damaging of those decisions, Short nixed a plan, which was far along enough to have a PR campaign already created, to send face masks to every household in America. The Dept. of Health and Human Services was backing the program, while other reports have revealed the U.S. Postal Service was also working on it. Continue reading.

Pence chief of staff rants wildly about anti-Trump conspiracy at DOJ — gets promptly shut down on CNN

AlterNet logoAppearing on CNN’s “State of the Union” with fill-in host Dana Bash, the chief of staff for Vice President Mike Pence argued that the Justice Department is rife with officials who are biased against Donald Trump, only to have Bash remind him that the all the investigations of the president have been initiated by Trump appointees.

After complaining about how the Roger Stone case was handled, Martin Short lashed out at the Justice Department after Bash stated, “Barr ordered the Justice Department to re-examine the case of the former national security advisor Michael Flynn who pleaded guilty to lying to investigators and President Trump said that Flynn’s situation is unfair, and he wished him best wishes and good luck. Why is the attorney general inserting himself in cases involving the president’s associates?”

Because, again, there has been a bias within the Department of Justice that the Attorney General Barr is trying to correct,” Short shot back. “He said that the president has not called him directly to do these things, but he is acting independently to do the reviews and I think that he is doing a terrific job with it.” Continue reading.