Coronavirus in the United States is now the Trump Virus. It is the tin can that Trump tied to his own tail and the faster he runs the louder it rattles and bangs behind him. It will rattle through November 3, 2020 when the dog Trump goes out with a whimper, not a bang.
Seven days before Donald Trump took office, his aides [were present for a required transition game-planning session on a hypothetical crisis they might face,] the rapid, global spread of a dangerous virus in cities like London and Seoul, one serious enough that some countries were imposing travel bans.
...
“Health officials warn that this could become the worst influenza pandemic since 1918,” Trump’s aides were told. Soon, they heard cases were popping up in California and Texas.
The briefing...was among a handful of scenarios presented to Trump’s top aides as part of a legally required transition exercise with members of the outgoing administration of Barack Obama.
...
...It was perhaps the most concrete and visible transition exercise that dealt with the possibility of pandemics, and top officials from both sides — whether they wanted to be there or not — were forced to confront a whole-of-government response to a crisis. The Trump team was told it could face specific challenges, such as shortages of ventilators, [Trump today said "nobody in their wildest dreams" would have anticipated the need for more ventilators, which hospitals worry may run short as more patients require them. trump’s ventilators shortage ] anti-viral drugs and other medical essentials, and that having a coordinated, unified national response was “paramount” — warnings that seem eerily prescient given the ongoing coronavirus crisis.
...
At least 30 representatives of Trump’s team — many of them soon-to-be Cabinet members — were present...Incoming Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross appeared to keep dozing off. Incoming Energy Secretary Rick Perry was getting along famously with Ernest Moniz, the man he was replacing, several fellow participants said.
...Some members of both groups kept going in and out of the room, but most paid quiet attention to the presentations, which were led by top Obama aides.
...
Obama aides, in op-eds and essays ripping the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus...have pointed to the Jan. 13, 2017, session as a key example of their effort to press the importance of pandemic preparedness to their successors.
...(Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, who oversaw the dissolution of the NSC’s global health security and biodefense section, has defended it as necessary streamlining, countering that global health “remained a top NSC priority.” Trump, when recently asked about the reshuffling, called the question “nasty” and said, “I don’t know anything about it.”)
...
“The problem is that they came in very arrogant and convinced that they knew more than the outgoing administration — full swagger,” one former Obama administration official who attended said.
“There were people who were there who said, ‘This is really stupid and why do we need to be here,’” added another senior Obama administration official who attended, alleging that Ross and incoming Education Secretary Betsy DeVos were especially dismissive in conversations on the sidelines of the session. “But some Trump people, like Tom Bossert, were trying to take it seriously.”
...
Asked whether information about the pandemic exercise reached the president-elect, a former senior Trump administration official who attended the meeting couldn’t say for sure but noted that it wasn’t “the kind of thing that really interested the president very much.”
“He was never interested in things that might happen. He’s totally focused on the stock market, the economy and always bashing his predecessor and giving him no credit,” the person said. “The possibility things were things he didn’t spend much time on or show much interest in.
...
Anything associated with Obama or his administration was also a no-go zone for Trump aides. If you brought them up, “that would be an immediate rejection, like, ‘Why are they even here? Why the fuck did you ask them?’”
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/16/trump-inauguration-warning-scenario-pandemic-132797
In January 2019, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence ranked a major disease outbreak among the top global threats to watch, warning: “We assess that the United States and the world will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large-scale outbreak of a contagious disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, strain international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support.” The administration also released a whole 30-page National Biodefense Strategy in 2018.
But the Trump administration never devoted resources commensurate with the perceived danger, critics have charged, and President Trump has acknowledged he was caught off guard. “Who would have thought?” he asked during a visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week. “Who would have thought we would even be having the subject?”
NSC officials have been coordinating behind the scenes with the intelligence and defense communities to gauge the threat and prepare for the possibility that the U.S. government will have to respond to much bigger numbers—and soon. Veterans of the Trump administration, notably former White House homeland security adviser Tom Bossert, have been warning in increasingly dire terms that officials at every level need to be taking more aggressive measures to combat the virus.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/12/america-national-security-viral-threat-126574
Seven days before Donald Trump took office, his aides [were present for a required transition game-planning session on a hypothetical crisis they might face,] the rapid, global spread of a dangerous virus in cities like London and Seoul, one serious enough that some countries were imposing travel bans.
...
“Health officials warn that this could become the worst influenza pandemic since 1918,” Trump’s aides were told. Soon, they heard cases were popping up in California and Texas.
The briefing...was among a handful of scenarios presented to Trump’s top aides as part of a legally required transition exercise with members of the outgoing administration of Barack Obama.
...
...It was perhaps the most concrete and visible transition exercise that dealt with the possibility of pandemics, and top officials from both sides — whether they wanted to be there or not — were forced to confront a whole-of-government response to a crisis. The Trump team was told it could face specific challenges, such as shortages of ventilators, [Trump today said "nobody in their wildest dreams" would have anticipated the need for more ventilators, which hospitals worry may run short as more patients require them. trump’s ventilators shortage ] anti-viral drugs and other medical essentials, and that having a coordinated, unified national response was “paramount” — warnings that seem eerily prescient given the ongoing coronavirus crisis.
...
At least 30 representatives of Trump’s team — many of them soon-to-be Cabinet members — were present...Incoming Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross appeared to keep dozing off. Incoming Energy Secretary Rick Perry was getting along famously with Ernest Moniz, the man he was replacing, several fellow participants said.
...Some members of both groups kept going in and out of the room, but most paid quiet attention to the presentations, which were led by top Obama aides.
...
Obama aides, in op-eds and essays ripping the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus...have pointed to the Jan. 13, 2017, session as a key example of their effort to press the importance of pandemic preparedness to their successors.
...(Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, who oversaw the dissolution of the NSC’s global health security and biodefense section, has defended it as necessary streamlining, countering that global health “remained a top NSC priority.” Trump, when recently asked about the reshuffling, called the question “nasty” and said, “I don’t know anything about it.”)
...
“The problem is that they came in very arrogant and convinced that they knew more than the outgoing administration — full swagger,” one former Obama administration official who attended said.
“There were people who were there who said, ‘This is really stupid and why do we need to be here,’” added another senior Obama administration official who attended, alleging that Ross and incoming Education Secretary Betsy DeVos were especially dismissive in conversations on the sidelines of the session. “But some Trump people, like Tom Bossert, were trying to take it seriously.”
...
Asked whether information about the pandemic exercise reached the president-elect, a former senior Trump administration official who attended the meeting couldn’t say for sure but noted that it wasn’t “the kind of thing that really interested the president very much.”
“He was never interested in things that might happen. He’s totally focused on the stock market, the economy and always bashing his predecessor and giving him no credit,” the person said. “The possibility things were things he didn’t spend much time on or show much interest in.
...
Anything associated with Obama or his administration was also a no-go zone for Trump aides. If you brought them up, “that would be an immediate rejection, like, ‘Why are they even here? Why the fuck did you ask them?’”
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/16/trump-inauguration-warning-scenario-pandemic-132797
In January 2019, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence ranked a major disease outbreak among the top global threats to watch, warning: “We assess that the United States and the world will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large-scale outbreak of a contagious disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, strain international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support.” The administration also released a whole 30-page National Biodefense Strategy in 2018.
But the Trump administration never devoted resources commensurate with the perceived danger, critics have charged, and President Trump has acknowledged he was caught off guard. “Who would have thought?” he asked during a visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week. “Who would have thought we would even be having the subject?”
NSC officials have been coordinating behind the scenes with the intelligence and defense communities to gauge the threat and prepare for the possibility that the U.S. government will have to respond to much bigger numbers—and soon. Veterans of the Trump administration, notably former White House homeland security adviser Tom Bossert, have been warning in increasingly dire terms that officials at every level need to be taking more aggressive measures to combat the virus.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/12/america-national-security-viral-threat-126574
