Tag: Trump White House

Kellyanne Conway Gets Hit With Unexpected Fact-Check Live On Fox News

That didn’t go as planned.

Kellyanne Conway on Wednesday slammed New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s slow response to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic in his city while defending President Donald Trump.

But her attacks on de Blasio didn’t quite go as expected when Fox News host Martha MacCallum noted Trump himself followed a similar timeline.

Conway, who is counselor to the president, went after de Blasio by noting his statements earlier this month urging New Yorkers to go out despite the pandemic threat, including this March 2 tweet:  Continue reading.

Trump team failed to follow NSC’s pandemic playbook

The 69-page document, finished in 2016, provided a step by step list of priorities – which were then ignored by the administration.

The Trump administration, state officials and even individual hospital workers are now racing against each other to get the necessary masks, gloves and other safety equipment to fight coronavirus — a scramble that hospitals and doctors say has come too late and left them at risk. But according to a previously unrevealed White House playbook, the government should’ve begun a federal-wide effort to procure that personal protective equipment at least two months ago.

“Is there sufficient personal protective equipment for healthcare workers who are providing medical care?” the playbook instructs its readers, as one early decision that officials should address when facing a potential pandemic. “If YES: What are the triggers to signal exhaustion of supplies? Are additional supplies available? If NO: Should the Strategic National Stockpile release PPE to states?”

The strategies are among hundreds of tactics and key policy decisions laid out in a 69-page National Security Council playbook on fighting pandemics, which POLITICO is detailing for the first time. Other recommendations include that the government move swiftly to fully detect potential outbreaks, secure supplemental funding and consider invoking the Defense Production Act — all steps in which the Trump administration lagged behind the timeline laid out in the playbook. Continue reading.

How the $2 trillion deal came together — and nearly fell apart

Inside McConnell, Schumer and Mnuchin’s race to rescue the economy.

It was going to cost $1 trillion.

Late on March 16, five days after the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus a pandemic, Larry Kudlow — the one-time cable news talker turned top economic advisor to President Donald Trump — was in the Senate’s historic Mansfield room, telling a group of senior GOP senators something they didn’t want to hear.

The U.S. economy was going to need a lot of help — and fast. Americans faced dire consequences if Congress didn’t act quickly, warned Kudlow, alongside Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, acting Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought and White House Legislative Affairs Director Eric Ueland. The senators were stunned and dismayed. Continue reading.

This damning timeline shows the White House is creating an ‘alternate reality’ where Trump is a competent leader: conservative

AlterNet logoWriting in The Bulwark this Wednesday, Tim Miller chronicled how President Trump “downplayed the threat of and ignored warnings” of the burgeoning threat of coronavirus in the early days of the outbreak. Despite the documented evidence of the White House initially attempting to minimize the threat, the Trump administration is trying to establish an “alternate reality” that paints Trump as a competent leader who was ahead of the situation.

“On March 18 the Trump campaign put out a list of actions the U.S. government took to prepare for COVID-19. They meant this as exculpation; instead, it highlights just how asleep Trump was at the switch, despite warnings from experts within his own government and from former Trump administration officials pleading with him from the outside,” Miller writes. “Most prominent among them were former Homeland Security advisor Tom Bossert, Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration Scott Gottlieb, and Director for Medical and Biodefense Preparedness at the National Security Council Dr. Luciana Borio who beginning in early January used op-eds, television appearances, social media posts, and private entreaties to try to spur the administration into action.”

Speaking to Miller, Borio described the steps the Trump administration should have taken in January to get ahead of the outbreak — steps that include tech solutions for “tracing that protects civil liberties.” Continue reading.

White House, Senate reach deal on $2 trillion stimulus package

The Hill logoThe White House and Senate leaders reached a deal early Wednesday morning on a massive stimulus package they hope will keep the nation from falling into a deep recession because of the coronavirus crisis.

The revamped Senate proposal will inject approximately $2 trillion into the economy, providing tax rebates, four months expanded unemployment benefits and a slew of business tax-relief provisions aimed at shoring up individual, family and business finances.

The deal includes $500 billion for a major corporate liquidity program through the Federal Reserve, $377 billion in small business aid, $100 billion for hospitals and $150 billion for state and local governments. Continue reading.

Trump’s weekly Cabinet Bible study leader blames coronavirus on gay people and environmentalists

AlterNet logoThe minister who hosts a weekly bible study session for President Trump’s Cabinet has an opinion about the origins of the coronavirus. According to Ralph Drollinger, it’s just another form of God’s wrath in response to an increasingly progressive nation.

“Relative to the coronavirus pandemic crisis, this is not God’s abandonment wrath nor His cataclysmic wrath, rather it is sowing and reaping wrath,” Drollinger wrote in a series of posts. “A biblically astute evaluation of the situation strongly suggests that America and other countries of the world are reaping what China has sown due to their leaders’ recklessness and lack of candor and transparency.”

As The Intercept points out, Drollinger also railed against the “religion of environmentalism” and people who express a “proclivity toward lesbianism and homosexuality,” who he claims have  infiltrated “high positions in our government, our educational system, our media and our entertainment industry” and “are largely responsible for God’s consequential wrath on our nation.”  Continue reading.

He Was Wrong On ‘Contained’ Coronavirus, But Larry Kudlow Says Trust Him On Social Distance

Trump’s top economic adviser insists that keeping the “economy going” is the “important point” while COVID-19 cases rise.

President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, finally admitted Monday he was wrong about coronavirus being “contained” a month ago. But now he wants America to trust him on easing social distancing — for the good of the economy.

Kudlow was making the interview rounds apparently preparing the nation for Trump’s reported intention to lift social distancing restrictions in just days as the president desperately seeks a strategy that might boost the economy. Kudlow spoke as conservative British Prime Minister Boris Johnson took the opposite tack and for the first time enacted strict national “lockdown” requirements in a bid to stem the spread of the virus there.

Kudlow said on Feb. 25 that coronavirus in the U.S. was “contained pretty close to airtight.” Now, with at least 41,000 cases and more than 500 deaths from the virus, he told CNBC: “I’ve changed my view.” Continue reading.

Jared Kushner has ‘thrown out the established government plan’ on pandemics — and has been swarmed by corporate execs

AlterNet logoPresident Trump has refused to use a wartime law to require major manufacturers to make vital equipment to combat the new coronavirus, reportedly after corporations successfully lobbied his top adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Last week, Trump signed the Defense Production Act, a Korean War-era law that allows the federal government to force American companies to ensure the availability of crucial equipment. But the president has refused to invoke the law even as governors across the country and lawmakers in Washington have warned that time is running out to stop the exponential spread of coronavirus infections.

Trump falsely compared the law to nationalizing businesses during a White House briefing on Sunday. Continue reading.

Jared Kushner behind plan to turn over pandemic crisis management to department with little medical experience: report

AlterNet logoBuried deep in an article describing the rift between the Trump administration and U.S. companies awaiting instructions on what the government requires of them to slow down the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, the New York Times reports that White House adviser Jared Kushner was behind a move to transfer responsibility for dealing with health crisis to FEMA although the agency lacks deep experience in dealing with health-related crises. Read the post here.

 

Trump team fiercely debates how long coronavirus restrictions should stay in place

The Hill logoA high-stakes debate is playing out among key figures in President Trump’s orbit over how quickly to loosen restrictions meant to combat the coronavirus.

A number of people around Trump have pushed for prioritizing the economy and sending people back to work as quickly as possible, particularly in less afflicted areas.

But Trump’s own public health officials and some of his allies on Capitol Hill have warned against risking higher infection rates and deaths for the sake of boosting the economy in the short term. Continue reading.