Tag: Trump White House

Kushner tries to clean up mess after suggesting Trump could delay election

The decision to delay an election is not up to Kushner, nor the White House.

Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, a senior White House adviser, said he is not ruling out the possibility that the November general election could be postponed due to the coronavirus.

“I’m not sure I can commit one way or the other, but right now that’s the plan,” Kushner said in an interview with Time published Tuesday night.

Kushner’s comments confirmed fears from Democrats that Trump may try to unilaterally move the election if he fears he may lose. Continue reading.

McEnany Cites Failed Pandemic Exercise To Prove White House Was Prepared

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany claimed on Thursday that the Obama administration had left behind an “insufficient” pandemic response plan, and that Donald Trump had replaced it with a superior version that left his team completely prepared to face the current coronavirus crisis.

“The Obama-Biden plan that has been referenced was insufficient,” McEnany said during a press gaggle, citing the former administration’s pandemic playbook, first reported by Politicoback in March.

She then bragged that the Trump administration had instead put together “an entire 2018 pandemic preparedness report,” and “did a whole exercise on pandemic preparedness in August of last year and had an entire after-action report put together” on the matter. Continue reading.

Trump White House Changes Its Story on Michael Flynn

New York Times logoThree years ago, President Trump swiftly fired his first national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, for lying to the F.B.I. Ahead of the November election, Mr. Trump and his allies are now telling a very different tale

WASHINGTON — After announcing that the Justice Department was dropping the criminal case against Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, Attorney General William P. Barr was presented with a crucial question: Was Mr. Flynn guilty of lying to the F.B.I. about the nature of phone calls he had with the Russian ambassador to the United States?

After all, Mr. Flynn had twice pleaded guilty to lying about them.

“Well, you know, people sometimes plead to things that turn out not to be crimes,” Mr. Barr said last week in an interview with CBS News. Then he went even further and described the infamous calls during the Trump presidential transition as “laudable.” Continue reading.

A metrics-obsessed White House struggles to define success on coronavirus

Even beyond the death count, there’s widespread reluctance to articulate what a positive outcome would be.

President Donald Trump stepped into the Rose Garden for a news conference Monday and stood between two enormous signs that graced the West Wing colonnade.

“AMERICA LEADS THE WORLD IN TESTING,” the signs read.

While that’s not accurate — on a per capita basis, the United States ranks 26th in testing — the public relations push on coronavirus testing highlights one of the White House’s greatest vulnerabilities: a president who is obsessed with metrics and numerical indications of success has few good numbers to point to. Continue reading.

Pence’s ‘special envoy’ in foreign aid office sparked ethics complaint just weeks after he started his job

AlterNet logoIn early 2018, an incoming Trump political appointee and ally of Vice President Mike Pence made an unusual suggestion to a United Nations agency whose funding hinged on support from a skeptical Trump administration: He pitched them to do business with one of his private-sector clients.

“Might merit your team’s consideration,” Max Primorac wrote in January, weeks before he formally started at the U.S. Agency for International Development, where he would eventually become an adviser to Pence.

The client pitch by an incoming official sparked a complaint a month later from an anonymous State Department official, according to documents obtained by ProPublica. The U.N. agency, the United Nations Development Program in Iraq, had by then received over $190 million in funding from USAID, the complaint said. Continue reading.

Abbott coronavirus test missed a large number of positive results caught by a rival firm, preliminary study says

Washington Post logoTest hailed by President Trump has been dogged by accuracy questions

The Abbott coronavirus test hailed by President Trump and used by the White House failed to detect infected samples in a large number of cases that were caught by a rival firm, a preliminary study says.

The speedy Abbott test, which is supposed to determine in five to 13 minutes whether a person has the virus, missed a third of the positive samples found by the diagnostic company Cepheid when both tests used nasopharyngeal swabs, said the study done by a group from New York University. It missed more than 48 percent when both firms’ tests used dry nasal swabs. The former penetrates deeply into the nasal passages, while the latter is less invasive.

The study, while preliminary and not yet peer-reviewed, raised questions about a test that has been praised by Trump, who displayed it at a Rose Garden news conference on April 2 and said it created “a whole new ballgame.” As the pandemic was creating a sense of urgency about testing, the Abbott test triggered a scramble among governors and other state officials because bottlenecks were causing waits of as long as a week or more for test results. Continue reading.

Dr. Birx and other White House officials pressuring CDC to revise COVID-19 death count to please Trump: report

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump and his coronavirus task force are pressuring officials at the Centers for Disease Control to dial down the number of COVID-19 deaths.

Five administration officials working on the pandemic response told The Daily Beast that the White House has pressed the CDC to work with states to revise how they count coronavirus deaths and report them back to the federal government.

Dr. Deborah Birx, in particular, has urged CDC officials to exclude some individuals who are presumed positive but don’t have confirmed lab results or those who have the virus but may not have died as a direct result, according to three senior administration officials. Continue reading.

Jared Kushner Admits There’s ‘Risk’ in Reopening the Country Too Soon

The same day that the nation’s top infectious-disease expert warned that reopening the economy too quickly could bring serious consequences, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner acknowledged that there is inherent “risk” in President Trump pushing Americans to get back to work.

Speaking to TIME’s senior White House correspondent Brian Bennett as part of the TIME100 Talks series on Tuesday, Kushner said “there’s risk in anything, but the President carries the burden of the 30 million Americans who have lost their jobs due to this historic effort to save lives.”

Asked about Dr. Anthony Fauci’s warning to lawmakers Tuesday about reopening too soon, Kushner said Fauci is “incredibly knowledgeable,” but that his advice must be taken alongside other factors. Continue reading.

White House Orders Staff to Wear Masks as Trump Misrepresents Testing Record

New York Times logoAt a news conference, the president reiterated that he would not wear a mask himself and again exaggerated the availability of testing for the coronavirus.

>WASHINGTON — The White House on Monday ordered all West Wing employees to wear masks at work unless they are sitting at their desks, an abrupt shift in policy after two aides working near the president — a military valet and Katie Miller, the vice president’s spokeswoman — tested positive for the coronavirus last week.

In an internal email obtained by The New York Times, people who work in the cramped quarters around the Oval Office were told that “as an additional layer of protection, we are requiring everyone who enters the West Wing to wear a mask or face covering.”

>Asked at a Rose Garden news conference whether he had ordered the change, Mr. Trump — who did not wear a mask and has repeatedly said he sees no reason to — said, “Yeah, I did.” But officials said the new requirement was not expected to apply to Mr. Trump or to Vice President Mike Pence. Continue reading.

Iowa governor who declared victory over coronavirus now quarantining after White House visit

AlterNet logoThe day before Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds took a big coronavirus victory lap at the White House last week, she collaborated with four other Republican governors on writing a Washington Post op-ed in which they effectively declared “mission accomplished.”

Now Reynolds is undergoing a modified quarantine plan after being exposed to a top aide to Vice President Mike Pence who tested positive for COVID-19 last week. It’s quite a turn for Reynolds, whose White House visit was intended to reassure Americans that the spike in outbreaks at meatpacking plants wouldn’t disrupt the nation’s food supply chain.

Of course, part of ensuring those meatpacking plants continue to be operational is a tag-team effort by Trump and Reynolds to make sure certain employees at those plants don’t have the same option to stay home if they don’t feel it’s safe to go to work. Trump finally pulled the trigger on the Defense Production Act at the end of April to force meatpacking plants to remain open no matter how dangerous the working conditions were. Around the same time, Reynolds announced she would strip unemployment benefits from workers in the state who declined to return to work. In other words, “endanger your life or starve,” as one employment attorney put it. Continue reading.