Conservative pundits blame a grab bag of supposed villains amid the coronavirus outbreak

[AUFAN78 3,926]

Too much nonsense on both sides, but I do agree with VP Pence and understand responding to claims that are debunked partisan garbage.

https://nypost.com/2020/03/01/criticisms-of-trumps-coronavirus-response-are-sickening-devine/

[AUFAN78 3,926]

Politics are ugly. Few do the research to understand truth.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/03/02/media_coverage_and_coronavirus_panic_what_the_numbers_show_142539.html

[homersapien 11,450]

16 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

Go an look at ANYTHING and I do MEAN ANYTHING you have posted up in the last 6 months. 

Stop evading David.  It's the mark of a inferior intellect.  It's the equivalent of calling someone a liar without being able to provide an example of the lie.

You made a specific charge so you need to back it up.

You'd make an excellent MAGA.  You already post like one.

 

[homersapien 11,450]

15 hours ago, AUFAN78 said:

Too much nonsense on both sides, but I do agree with VP Pence and understand responding to claims that are debunked partisan garbage.

https://nypost.com/2020/03/01/criticisms-of-trumps-coronavirus-response-are-sickening-devine/

Read the OP.

"Choose your scapegoat: Democrats, the news media, the Chinese government, the “deep state,” Bernie Sanders or even “identity politics.”

All received some share of the blame this week from conservative media figures for the growing public concern over the coronavirus, the communicable disease that has spread across the globe.

In fact, many conservative commentators have expressed less interest in the spread of the virus or efforts to combat it than they are in the story of the virus — a story they are convinced shows evidence of bias designed to harm President Trump.

Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson’s commentaries were a mix of paranoia, erroneous information and sometimes dangerous conspiracy theories about the virus, which has killed about 2,800 people, mostly in China, where it was first detected.

Trump, who often engages in a feedback loop with allied media figures, has already picked up on one strand of the popular pundits’ thinking: That the news media and Democrats have hyped the threat posed by the outbreak.

“Low Ratings Fake News MSDNC (Comcast) & @CNN are doing everything possible to make the Caronavirus look as bad as possible, including panicking markets, if possible,” he tweeted Wednesday, misspelling the name of the disease in the process. “Likewise their incompetent Do Nothing Democrat comrades are all talk, no action. USA in great shape!”............

[DKW 86 7,441]

11 hours ago, homersapien said:

Stop evading David.  It's the mark of a inferior intellect.  It's the equivalent of calling someone a liar without being able to provide an example of the lie.

You made a specific charge so you need to back it up.

You'd make an excellent MAGA.  You already post like one.

[DKW 86 7,441]

On 3/1/2020 at 10:23 AM, homersapien said:

For example....?

What "talking points" are you referring to?

What is it that the "rest of the world has moved on from six months ago"?

 

On 3/2/2020 at 10:47 AM, homersapien said:

Still waiting David.

 

On 3/2/2020 at 5:56 PM, DKW 86 said:

Go an look at ANYTHING and I do MEAN ANYTHING you have posted up in the last 6 months. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/after-a-congressional-briefing-on-election-threats-trump-soured-on-acting-spy-chief/2020/02/20/1ed2b4ec-53f1-11ea-b119-4faabac6674f_story.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/after-a-congressional-briefing-on-election-threats-trump-soured-on-acting-spy-chief/2020/02/20/1ed2b4ec-53f1-11ea-b119-4faabac6674f_story.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/21/dont-mince-words-trump-is-abetting-an-attack-our-country/

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/02/let-the-voters-decide-doesnt-work-if-trump-fires-his-national-security-staff-so-russia-can-help-him-again.html

https://www.salon.com/2020/02/21/trump-names-right-wing-troll-richard-grenell-to-run-national-intelligence-what-could-go-wrong/

 

Quote

 

Richard Allen Grenell (born September 18, 1966) is an American diplomat, civil servant, and media consultant. Grenell is the acting Director of National Intelligence, the U.S. Ambassador to Germany, and Special Presidential Envoy for Serbia and Kosovo Peace Negotiations.

Grenell served as a spokesperson at the United Nations under four different U.S. ambassadors during the George W. Bush administration and US ambassador to Germany. Following his U.N. tenure, he formed Capitol Media Partners, an international strategic media and public affairs consultancy; he also worked as a Fox News contributor. He was a foreign policy spokesperson for Republican Mitt Romney during Romney's 2012 campaign for president of the United States; he is the first openly gay individual to work as a spokesperson for a Republican presidential candidate.

In September 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Grenell to become the U.S. Ambassador to Germany. On April 26, 2018, he was confirmed by the United States Senate by a vote of 56 to 42. Grenell presented his credentials to the President of Germany on May 8, 2018. On February 20, 2020, Trump appointed Grenell to the post of Acting Director of National Intelligence. Grenell is considered a staunch Trump loyalist.

United Nations (2001–2008)

 

Grenell voting at a UN Security Council meeting in 2005

In 2001, Grenell was appointed by President George W. Bush as Director of Communications and Public Diplomacy for the United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations. Serving in that role until 2008, Grenell became the longest-serving U.S. spokesman at the United Nations, advising four different U.S. Ambassadors. During his tenure, Grenell led communication strategies on such issues as the War on Terror, global peacekeeping operations, Iran and North Korea's nuclear weapons programs, and the UN Oil for Food corruption scandal.^{[citation needed]}

Consulting, media, and campaign work (2009–2017)

In 2009, Grenell founded Capitol Media Partners, an international strategic media and public affairs consultancy with offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Washington, D.C.^{[citation needed]} He was also under contract as a Fox News contributor, commenting on foreign affairs and the media.^[4][5] Grenell has written for The Wall Street Journal,^[6][7] CBS News,^[8][9] CNN,^[10] Politico,^[11] Huffington Post,^[12] The Washington Times,^[13] Newsmax,^[14] and Al Jazeera.^[15] In 2012, CNN ranked Grenell as one of the top five Republican consultants in social media,^[16] and Time magazine named Grenell as one of the Top 10 Political Twitter Feeds of 2014.^[17]

Grenell was a foreign policy spokesperson for Republican candidate Mitt Romney during his 2012 presidential campaign. Grenell is the first openly gay person to work as a spokesperson for a Republican presidential candidate.^[18][19]

Grenell was a signatory to a 2013 amicus curiae brief submitted to the Supreme Court in support of same-sex marriage during the Hollingsworth v. Perry case.^[20]

In 2016, Grenell's consulting firm accepted more than $100,000 from the Magyar Foundation of North America to provide public relations support for the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán. Grenell did not disclose this payment under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) prior to his work in the Trump administration.^[21]

CNN reported days after Grenell’s appointment as DNI that his personal website had—until 2018—touted consulting work he had done for clients in Iran, China, Kazakhstan and other countries, some of which could violate foreign lobbying laws, such as FARA, or jeopardize his security clearance.^[22]

Ambassador to Germany

 

Grenell (left) with Berlin Governing Mayor Michael Müller in 2018

In September 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Grenell to become the United States Ambassador to Germany.^[23] After a significant delay, the Senate confirmed Grenell 56–42 on April 26, 2018.^[24][25] Grenell was sworn in by Vice President Mike Pence on May 3, 2018,^[26] making him the highest-ranking openly gay official ever in a Republican administration.^[27] Grenell was also under consideration for the posts of U.S. Ambassador to NATO and United States Ambassador to the United Nations.^[28][29]

Grenell presented his credentials to the President of Germany on May 8, 2018.^[30] Within hours of taking office, Grenell offended diplomats and business leaders when he tweeted that “German companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately.”^[31] The tweet was widely perceived as a threat, with the Foreign Minister of Luxembourg, Jean Asselborn, commenting that "This man was accredited as ambassador only yesterday. To give German businesses such orders … that’s just not how you can treat your allies.”^[32] The leader of Germany's Social Democratic Party stated that Grenell "does appear to need some tutoring" in the "fine art of diplomacy", while the Die Linke party urged the Merkel government to summon Grenell to explain his comments.^[32]

Grenell stirred controversy in June 2018 by telling Breitbart News, "I absolutely want to empower other conservatives throughout Europe, other leaders."^[33] This comment was described^{[by whom?]} as a breach of diplomatic protocol and a breach of Article 14 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which requires ambassadors to be politically neutral in the domestic politics of the countries where they serve.^[34][33] Prominent German politicians called for Grenell's dismissal.^{[35][36][37][38]} Martin Schulz, former leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, said, "What this man is doing is unheard of in international diplomacy. If a German ambassador were to say in Washington that he is there to boost the Democrats, he would have been kicked out immediately."^[35]

In the fall of 2018, Grenell played a key diplomatic role in planning the arrest of Julian Assange by providing backchannel assurances to Ecuador that Assange would not face the death penalty in the United States.^[39]

Grenell was a regular contributor on Fox News's Tucker Carlson Tonight during the first few months of his ambassadorship in Germany. In November 2018, he appeared on the show and repeated his criticism of Angela Merkel's immigration policies. Grenell compared Merkel unfavorably to the recently-elected Chancellor of Austria Sebastian Kurz, who (according to Grenell) "won in a very big way" because of his strict stance on immigration. The magazine Der Spiegel called these remarks a "thinly veiled call for a change of government in Berlin".^[34]

In December 2018, during the affair surrounding Der Spiegel journalist Claas Relotius, Grenell wrote to the magazine, complained about an anti-American institutional bias ("Anti-Amerikanismus"), and asked for an independent investigation.^[40][41][42]

In January 2019, Grenell told Handelsblatt that European companies participating in the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline are "always in danger, because sanctions are always possible". The Trump administration has long opposed the Russian-backed Nord Stream 2, a pipeline for delivering natural gas from Russia to Germany.^[43] Grenell also threatened to sanction German companies involved in the construction of the Nord Stream 2.^[44]

Der Spiegel published a profile of Grenell on January 11, 2019, using interviews with 30 “American and German diplomats, cabinet members, lawmakers, high-ranking officials, lobbyists and think tank experts". The magazine claimed that "Almost all of these sources paint an unflattering portrait of the ambassador, one remarkably similar to Donald Trump, the man who sent him to Berlin. A majority of them describe Grenell as a vain, narcissistic person who dishes out aggressively, but can barely handle criticism." The profile claimed that Grenell was politically isolated in Berlin because of his association with the far-right Alternative for Germany Party, causing the leaders of the mainstream German parties—including the Chancellor herself—to avoid contact with him.^[34] The sources claimed that Grenell knew little "about Germany and Europe, that he ignores most of the dossiers his colleagues at the embassy write for him, and that his knowledge of the subject matter is superficial".^[34]

In February 2019, it was announced that Grenell was leading the Trump administration's newly formed effort to promote the decriminalization of homosexuality in nations in which homosexuality was illegal.^[45]

In March 2019, Wolfgang Kubicki, deputy chairman of the Free Democratic Party, called for Grenell to be expelled from Germany. Kubicki said, "Any U.S. diplomat who acts like a high commissioner of an occupying power must learn that our tolerance also knows its limits."^[46]

In January 2020, Lev Parnas told The Daily Beast that he was told to ask Grenell for advance notice if the DoJ were to move to extradite indicted Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash.^[47][48]

Special presidential envoy for Serbia and Kosovo peace negotiations (2019-present)

In October 2019, Trump named Grenell a special envoy for Serbia and Kosovo peace negotiations.^[49]

***So 19-20 years in the US Dept of State and World Media Writing for:
 Grenell has written for The Wall Street Journal,^[6][7] CBS News,^[8][9] CNN,^[10] Politico,^[11] Huffington Post,^[12] The Washington Times,^[13] Newsmax,^[14] and Al Jazeera.^[15] In 2012, CNN ranked Grenell as one of the top five Republican consultants in social media,^[16] and Time magazine named Grenell as one of the Top 10 Political Twitter Feeds of 2014. AND Der Spiegel, Grenell is nothing more than a Party Hack?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/justice-dept-to-reduce-sentencing-recommendation-for-trump-associate-roger-stone-official-says-after-president-calls-it-unfair/2020/02/11/ad81fd36-4cf0-11ea-bf44-f5043eb3918a_story.html

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/02/15/why-presidency-cant-go-back-normal-trump-115362

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/post-impeachment-trump-declares-himself-the-chief-law-enforcement-officer-of-america/2020/02/18/b8ff49c0-5290-11ea-b119-4faabac6674f_story.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/america-the-banana-republic/2020/02/13/c58c7324-4ea9-11ea-9b5c-eac5b16dafaa_story.html

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/30/20997046/constitution-electoral-college-senate-popular-vote-trump

etc etc etc

America is not now, nor has it been a banana republic.
We will move past Trump the day after he leaves office,
Trump will leave office.  

Call me crazy, but I feel really confident on all of that.

[homersapien 11,450]

Any particular "talking point" you would like to refute? 

 

[DKW 86 7,441]

4 hours ago, homersapien said:

Any particular "talking point" you would like to refute? 

 

Thanks man, I needed that laugh...👍

[homersapien 11,450]

19 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

Thanks man, I needed that laugh...👍

Of course you did - you are a sad little man. 

[AUFAN78 3,926]

On 3/3/2020 at 10:12 AM, homersapien said:

Read the OP.

"Choose your scapegoat: Democrats, the news media, the Chinese government, the “deep state,” Bernie Sanders or even “identity politics.”

All received some share of the blame this week from conservative media figures for the growing public concern over the coronavirus, the communicable disease that has spread across the globe.

In fact, many conservative commentators have expressed less interest in the spread of the virus or efforts to combat it than they are in the story of the virus — a story they are convinced shows evidence of bias designed to harm President Trump.

Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson’s commentaries were a mix of paranoia, erroneous information and sometimes dangerous conspiracy theories about the virus, which has killed about 2,800 people, mostly in China, where it was first detected.

Trump, who often engages in a feedback loop with allied media figures, has already picked up on one strand of the popular pundits’ thinking: That the news media and Democrats have hyped the threat posed by the outbreak.

“Low Ratings Fake News MSDNC (Comcast) & @CNN are doing everything possible to make the Caronavirus look as bad as possible, including panicking markets, if possible,” he tweeted Wednesday, misspelling the name of the disease in the process. “Likewise their incompetent Do Nothing Democrat comrades are all talk, no action. USA in great shape!”............

I'll stick with truth.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/coronavirus-the-latest-attempt-to-prove-trumps-a-chump/

[homersapien 11,450]

On 3/2/2020 at 7:18 PM, AUFAN78 said:

Too much nonsense on both sides, but I do agree with VP Pence and understand responding to claims that are debunked partisan garbage.

https://nypost.com/2020/03/01/criticisms-of-trumps-coronavirus-response-are-sickening-devine/

Trump's comments speak for themselves, as do the comments of the talking heads who worship him.

Presumably that's the "debunked partisan garbage" you are referring to.  

[homersapien 11,450]

14 hours ago, AUFAN78 said:

I'll stick with truth.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/coronavirus-the-latest-attempt-to-prove-trumps-a-chump/

You betcha.  The whole thing is the media's fault (and Obama).

[AUFAN78 3,926]

6 hours ago, homersapien said:

You betcha.  The whole thing is the media's fault (and Obama).

Homes, the media's political nonsense is unnecessary. 

 https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/03/06/media_cant_keep_politics_out_of_coronavirus_coverage_142588.html

[bigbird 60,580]

On 3/6/2020 at 4:59 PM, AUFAN78 said:

Homes, the media's political nonsense is unnecessary. 

 https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/03/06/media_cant_keep_politics_out_of_coronavirus_coverage_142588.html

Pretty revealing article

[TexasTiger 13,026]

30 minutes ago, bigbird said:

Pretty revealing article

Reveals the writer is full of s*** with his own agenda. Can you find columnists out there  seeking clicks? Sure, this jerk included. But this is pure, unsubstantiated conspiracy BS:

”Despite what the Centers for Disease Control told the public in 2014, there is compelling evidence transmission of Ebola was airborne via coughs and sneezes and the virus could be spread by people months after they were no longer symptomatic.”

Where?

One member of the media, slams the media while doing what he alleges, but worse.

[AUDub 11,184]

Mark Hemingway's ideological blind spot here is pretty laughable. I remember conservative media's tenor during the Ebola scare, especially at Fox. With the exception of Shep Smith and Greta Van Susteren, they didn't exactly cover themselves in glory.

22 minutes ago, TexasTiger said:

Reveals the writer is full of s*** with his own agenda. Can you find columnists out there  seeking clicks? Sure, this jerk included. But this is pure, unsubstantiated conspiracy BS:

”Despite what the Centers for Disease Control told the public in 2014, there is compelling evidence transmission of Ebola was airborne via coughs and sneezes and the virus could be spread by people months after they were no longer symptomatic.”

Where?

One member of the media, slams the media while doing what he alleges, but worse.

And this reveals a misunderstanding of the terms "droplet precautions and "airborne," which are legitimate terms of art in medicine. Ebola was never considered airborne and never has been. 

[Mikey 16,737]

On 2/28/2020 at 11:45 AM, homersapien said:

Choose your scapegoat: Democrats, the news media, the Chinese government, the “deep state,” Bernie Sanders or even “identity politics.”

I'll take the Chinese Government for 50. They could and should have been honest about this from the start. Honesty on their part MAY have aided containment. Beyond that, you'll have to blame God, the Devil or Mother Nature depending on your view of such things. Pandemics have raged from time to time ever since there was a "pan" to rage through.

[bigbird 60,580]

1 hour ago, TexasTiger said:

Reveals the writer is full of s*** with his own agenda. Can you find columnists out there  seeking clicks? Sure, this jerk included. But this is pure, unsubstantiated conspiracy BS:

”Despite what the Centers for Disease Control told the public in 2014, there is compelling evidence transmission of Ebola was airborne via coughs and sneezes and the virus could be spread by people months after they were no longer symptomatic.”

Where?

One member of the media, slams the media while doing what he alleges, but worse.

Pretty revealing post

[alexava 6,973]

52 minutes ago, Mikey said:

I'll take the Chinese Government for 50. They could and should have been honest about this from the start. Honesty on their part MAY have aided containment. Beyond that, you'll have to blame God, the Devil or Mother Nature depending on your view of such things. Pandemics have raged from time to time ever since there was a "pan" to rage through.

Yea, at least our president is honest!

[homersapien 11,450]

Trump's mismanagement helped fuel coronavirus crisis

Current and former administration officials blame the president for creating a no-bad-news atmosphere that stifled attempts to combat the outbreak.

 

On Friday, as coronavirus infections rapidly multiplied aboard a cruise ship marooned off the coast of California, health department officials and Vice President Mike Pence came up with a plan to evacuate thousands of passengers, avoiding the fate of a similar cruise ship, the Diamond Princess, which became a petri dish of coronavirus infections. Quickly removing passengers was the safest outcome, health officials and Pence reasoned.

But President Donald Trump had a different idea: Leave the infected passengers on board — which would help keep the number of U.S. coronavirus cases as low as possible.

“Do I want to bring all those people off? People would like me to do it,” Trump admitted at a press conference at the CDC later on Friday. “I would rather have them stay on, personally.”

 

“I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault,” Trump added, saying that he ultimately empowered Pence to decide whether to evacuate the passengers.

For six weeks behind the scenes, and now increasingly in public, Trump has undermined his administration’s own efforts to fight the coronavirus outbreak — resisting attempts to plan for worst-case scenarios, overturning a public-health plan upon request from political allies and repeating only the warnings that he chose to hear. Members of Congress have grilled top officials like Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Centers for Disease Control Director Robert Redfield over the government’s biggest mistake: failing to secure enough testing to head off a coronavirus outbreak in the United States. But many current and former Trump administration officials say the true management failure was Trump’s.

“It always ladders to the top,” said one person helping advise the administration’s response, who noted that Trump’s aides discouraged Azar from briefing the president about the coronavirus threat back in January. “Trump’s created an atmosphere where the judgment of his staff is that he shouldn’t need to know these things.”

Interviews with 13 current and former officials, as well as individuals close to the White House, painted a picture of a president who rewards those underlings who tell him what he wants to hear while shunning those who deliver bad news. For instance, aides heaped praise on Trump for his efforts to lock down travel from China — appealing to the president’s comfort zone of border security — but failed to convey the importance of doing simultaneous community testing, which could have uncovered a potential U.S. outbreak. Government officials and independent scientists now fear that the coronavirus has been silently spreading in the United States for weeks, as unexplained cases have popped up in more than 25 states.

“It’s a clearly difficult situation when the top wants to hear certain answers,” said one former official who’s briefed the White House. “That can make it difficult for folks to express their true assessment — even the most experienced and independent minds.”

While Trump last week allowed hospitals and labs to start developing their own coronavirus tests, wrongly blaming Obama administration regulations for a delay, the same move could have been made weeks ago had the president and his advisers felt it was necessary, said two officials.

The White House press office declined to comment on the record, referring questions to HHS.

The health department said that Trump had been responsive to the department's concerns and understood the seriousness of the coronavirus threat from the first day he was briefed.

"The President took early and decisive actions like instituting travel restrictions and utilizing the quarantine authority" to protect Americans from the outbreak, an HHS spokesperson said.

HHS also stressed that Azar and Trump had a good working relationship.

"The Secretary always offers the President his honest assessment, and always insists when briefing the President on public health issues that the relevant experts participate," the spokesperson said.

Trump-inspired disorganization plagues early response

As the outbreak has grown, Trump has become attached to the daily count of coronavirus cases and how the United States compares to other nations, reiterating that he wants the U.S. numbers kept as low as possible. Health officials have found explicit ways to oblige him by highlighting the most optimistic outcomes in briefings, and their agencies have tamped down on promised transparency. The CDC has stopped detailing how many people in the country have been tested for the virus, and its online dashboard is running well behind the number of U.S. cases tracked by Johns Hopkins and even lags the European Union’s own estimate of U.S. cases.

After senior CDC official Nancy Messonnier correctly warned on Feb. 25 that a U.S. coronavirus outbreak was inevitable, a statement that spooked the stock market and broke from the president’s own message that the situation was under control, Trump himself grew angry and administration officials discussed muzzling Messonnier for the duration of the coronavirus crisis, said two individuals close to the administration. However, Azar defended her role, and Messonnier ultimately was allowed to continue making public appearances, although her tone grew less dire in subsequent briefings.

Trump’s defenders can point to many coronavirus crises that, so far, have been failures of bureaucracy and disorganization. The president didn’t lock out a government scientist from CDC. He didn’t know that officials decided to fly back coronavirus-infected Americans aboard planes with hundreds of others who had tested negative, with Trump bursting in anger when he learned the news.

But Trump has added to that disorganization through his own decisions. Rather than empower a sole leader to fight the outbreak, as President Barack Obama did with Ebola in 2014, he set up a system where at least three different people — Azar, Vice President Mike Pence and coronavirus task force coordinator Debbie Birx — can claim responsibility. Three people who have dealt with the task force said it’s not clear what Birx’s role is, and that coronavirus-related questions sent to her have been rerouted to the vice president’s office.

In response, Pence’s office said it has positioned Birx as the vice president’s “right arm,” advising him on the response, while Azar continues to oversee the health department's numerous coronavirus operations.

Trump on Friday night also shook up White House operations, replacing acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney with Rep. Mark Meadows, a longtime ally. The long-expected ouster of Mulvaney was welcomed in corners like the health department, given that Mulvaney had been one of Azar’s top critics. But the abrupt staff shuffle in the middle of the coronavirus outbreak injects further uncertainty into the government’s response, said a current official and two former officials. It’s not yet clear what Mulvaney’s departure will mean for his key lieutenants involved in fighting the outbreak, like Domestic Policy Council chief Joe Grogan, for instance.

“Every office has office politics — even the Oval Office,” said one individual. “You’d hope we could wait to work it out until after a public health emergency.”

Health officials compete for Trump’s approval

The pressure to earn Trump’s approval can be a distraction at best and an obsession at worst: Azar, having just survived a bruising clash with a deputy and sensing that his job was on the line, spent part of January making appearances on conservative TV outlets and taking other steps to shore up his anti-abortion bona fides and win approval from the president, even as the global coronavirus outbreak grew stronger.

“We have in President Trump the greatest protector of religious liberty who has ever sat in the Oval Office,” Azar said on Fox News on Jan. 16, hours after working to rally global health leaders to fight the United Nations’ stance on abortion rights. Trump also had lashed out at Azar over bad health-care polling that day.

Around the same time, Azar had concluded that the new coronavirus posed a public health risk and tried to share an urgent message with the president: The potential outbreak could leave tens of thousands of Americans sickened and many dead.

But Trump’s aides mocked and belittled Azar as alarmist, as he warned the president of a major threat to public health and his own economic agenda, said three people briefed on the conversations. Some officials argued that the virus would be no worse than the flu.

Azar, meanwhile, had his own worries: A clash with Medicare chief Seema Verma had weakened his standing in the White House, which in December had considered replacements for both Azar and Verma.

“Because he feels pretty insecure, about the feuds within his department and the desire to please the president, I don’t know if he was in the position to deliver the message that the president didn’t want to hear,” said one former official who's worked with Azar.

The jockeying for Trump’s favor was part of the cause of Azar’s destructive feud with Verma, as the two tried to box each other out of events touting Trump initiatives. Now, officials including Azar, Verma and other senior leaders are forced to spend time shoring up their positions with the president and his deputies at a moment when they should be focused on a shared goal: stopping a potential pandemic.

“The boss has made it clear, he likes to see his people fight, and he wants the news to be good,” said one adviser to a senior health official involved in the coronavirus response. “This is the world he’s made.”

President swayed by flattery, personal appeals

Trump’s unpredictable demands and attention to public statements — and his own susceptibility to flattery — have created an administration where top officials feel constantly at siege, worried that the next presidential tweet will decide their professional future, and panicked that they need to regularly impress him.

The most obvious practitioner of this strategy is Azar, who became Trump’s second health secretary after the first, Tom Price, failed to bond with Trump and was ousted over a charter-jet scandal. Azar decided early in his tenure to have “zero daylight” with the president, said three individuals close to him, and the health secretary routinely fawns over the president in his TV appearances on Fox News. “No other president has had the guts, the courage to take on these special interests,” Azar told Fox News host Tucker Carlson in December after Trump pushed new price transparency on the health care industry.

Azar’s team also has insisted upon using background photos for his Twitter account that always show him with the president — sometimes silently standing behind Trump while he speaks. Azar is alone among Cabinet members in this practice; secretaries like HUD’s Ben Carson, Transportation’s Elaine Chao and Treasury’s Steven Mnuchin opted for bland Twitter backgrounds that show their headquarters.

"The Secretary respects the President and values their strong relationship," said an HHS spokesperson, when asked about Azar’s approach to working with Trump and use of Twitter photos.

Other health officials have modeled similar behavior as Azar. Asked by Trump if he wanted to make a “little statement” on Friday, CDC Director Redfield responded by praising the president’s “decisive leadership” and visit to CDC headquarters amid the outbreak. “I think that’s the most important thing I want to say,” Redfield said.

At least one health official has offered a more subtle reminder of her loyalties. Verma wore an Ivanka Trump-brand pendant to some meetings and events with the president, before it was stolen in 2018.

Health officials also have to guard their words and predictions, worried that the president will fixate on the wrong data point or blurt out damaging information in public. Trump on Friday told reporters that he’d initially scrapped a trip to the CDC because of a possible coronavirus case at the agency. The announcement came as a surprise to CDC staff, including those preparing for Trump’s visit, because they hadn’t been briefed on the potential coronavirus case, POLITICO first reported.

 

I just got off the phone with the President. He told me that his administration will not be sending any victims of the Coronavirus from the Diamond Princess cruise ship to Anniston, Alabama. Thank you, @POTUS, for working with us to ensure the safety of all Alabamians.

— Richard Shelby (@SenShelby) February 23, 2020

 

Meanwhile, Trump’s political allies have tried to circumvent the policy process, causing further headaches for the overwhelmed health department. Alabama Republicans prevailed upon Trump to scrap an HHS contingency plan to potentially quarantine some coronavirus-infected Americans at a facility in their state last month.

“I just got off the phone with the President,” Sen. Richard Shelby tweeted on Feb. 23. “He told me that his administration will not be sending any victims of the Coronavirus from the Diamond Princess cruise ship to Anniston, Alabama.”

But Democrats in a California city facing a similar situation failed to get a similar guarantee, leading them to file a lawsuit that accused the administration of political favoritism.

“California must not have the pull to get taken off the list,” attorney Jennifer Keller, representing Costa Mesa, Calif., reportedly said during a court hearing last month. “Alabama does.” A federal judge later halted plans to transfer coronavirus-stricken patients to a facility in the city.

Meanwhile, the president has allowed feuds to fester and spill into public view. Azar, for instance, has battled with White House officials and Verma for months over policies, personnel and even seats aboard the presidential airplane. Those fights have been reignited amid the coronavirus crisis, when Azar clashed with longtime rivals like Grogan over funding the response and whether enough coronavirus tests were being performed.

They’ve also cast a long shadow over strategy, like Azar’s decision not to push for Verma to be added to the coronavirus task force that he oversaw for nearly a month. Verma instead was added to the task force on March 2, several days after Pence took over leading the effort. While Azar said he asked for Verma to join the task force, and an HHS spokesperson pointed to the secretary’s public statement, two people with knowledge of task force operations said that the White House officials had raised questions about her omission.

Officials call the original decision to exclude Verma from the task force short-sighted at best, given the virus’ potential threat to the elderly patients covered by the Medicare program and residents living in nursing homes that are regulated by Verma’s agency.

With Trump unwilling — or unable — to put a stop to the health department's fights, they’ve occupied and gripped Washington during relative peacetime. When at war against a potential pandemic, there’s no room for these distractions, officials say.

“If this sort of dysfunction exists as part of the everyday operations — then, yes, during a true crisis the problems are magnified and exacerbated,” said a former Trump HHS official. “And with extremely detrimental consequences.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/07/trump-coronavirus-management-style-123465

[AURex 2,031]

 

Trump -- "I am a medical whiz." "It is contained." Go about your normal daily lives.

 

[AUFAN78 3,926]

On 3/8/2020 at 9:01 AM, TexasTiger said:

Reveals the writer is full of s*** with his own agenda. Can you find columnists out there  seeking clicks? Sure, this jerk included. But this is pure, unsubstantiated conspiracy BS:

”Despite what the Centers for Disease Control told the public in 2014, there is compelling evidence transmission of Ebola was airborne via coughs and sneezes and the virus could be spread by people months after they were no longer symptomatic.”

Where?

One member of the media, slams the media while doing what he alleges, but worse.

We have multiple articles with debunked theories  and a handful that adequately portray the coronavirus, yet we gravitate towards some potential misstatement in 2014?  

Nuff said, this is political and we have too many effeminate males on our forum. No surprises here. Sad.

[homersapien 11,450]

17 hours ago, AUFAN78 said:

We have multiple articles with debunked theories  and a handful that adequately portray the coronavirus, yet we gravitate towards some potential misstatement in 2014?  

Nuff said, this is political and we have too many effeminate males on our forum. No surprises here. Sad.

It's clear evidence this "reporter" has no credibility in scientific issues.

(And "effeminate males"?!   WTF?? )

[AUDub 11,184]

55 minutes ago, homersapien said:

(And "effeminate males"?!   WTF?? )

Picking up some Weegs vibes here. 

[AUDub 11,184]

Oliver's follow up is pretty jarring, what with there being no audience.