President Trump on Twitter:
“For decades the CDC looked at, and studied, its testing system, but did nothing about it. It would always be inadequate and slow for a large scale pandemic, but a pandemic would never happen, they hoped. President Obama made changes that only complicated things further…”
“The Trump administration announced a series of steps Friday aimed at boosting the availability of coronavirus testing, which has drawn heated criticism from lawmakers of both parties and frustrated Americans who are sick and have been unable to find out whether they are infected,” the Washington Post reports.
“Australia’s home affairs minister confirmed Friday that he tested positive for the novel coronavirus, less than a week after meeting with Attorney General William Barr, senior White House adviser Ivanka Trump and other White House officials,” CNN reports.
ABC News/Ipsos poll: “Although unease over the coronavirus is high, it also strongly breaks along partisan lines. Among Democrats, 83% are concerned about getting coronavirus, including 47% who are very concerned, and among Republicans, 56% are concerned, including only 15% who are very concerned. Only 17% of Democrats are not concerned while a larger 44% of Republicans are not concerned.”
“The coronavirus outbreak in Italy has gotten so bad so quickly that some doctors are now forced to practice “catastrophe medicine” — determining which severely ill patients should, and should not, get care based on the resources available,” Axios reports.
“The U.S. is not at that point — but a week ago, neither was Italy. The rapid deterioration there underlines the importance of taking preventive measures seriously, and the need for political and health leaders to start thinking about hard ethical questions.”
Bloomberg: Italy’s nightmare offers chilling preview.
“Jared Kushner has enlisted the help of model Karlie Kloss’s father to help figure out what the US should do about coronavirus – who in turn asked for suggestions via Facebook,” the Daily Mail reports..
“Kurt Kloss, an emergency room doctor in upstate New York, created a post in a 20,000-strong private group for doctors that asked for ‘serious suggestions’ about how to respond to coronavirus.”
Wrote Mr. Kloss: “If you were in charge of Federal response to the Pandemic what would your recommendation be. I have a direct channel to the person now in charge at the White House.”
New York Times: “Between 160 million and 214 million people in the U.S. could be infected over the course of the epidemic, according to one projection. That could last months or even over a year, with infections concentrated in shorter periods, staggered across time in different communities, experts said. As many as 200,000 to 1.7 million people could die.”
“And, the calculations based on the C.D.C.’s scenarios suggested, 2.4 million to 21 million people in the U.S. could require hospitalization, potentially crushing the nation’s medical system, which has only about 925,000 staffed hospital beds. Fewer than a tenth of those are for people who are critically ill.”
USA Today: “Women were more likely to report washing their hands more often than men were, 58% compared with 50%. The gap was much larger between Democrats and Republicans: 63% of Democrats were washing their hands more often, but just 48% of Republicans were doing so.”
New York Times: “After feeling besieged by enemies for three years, Mr. Trump and some of his advisers view so many issues through the lens of political warfare — assuming that criticism is all about point scoring — that it has become hard to see what is real and what is not, according to people around the president. Even when others with Mr. Trump’s best interests at heart disagree, they find it hard to penetrate what they see as the bubble around him.”
“Among the advisers who share the president’s more jaundiced view is his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who considers the problem more about public psychology than a health reality, according to people who have spoken with him. Mr. Kushner has gotten more involved in the response in recent days, according to three White House advisers. A person close to Mr. Kushner said his views were being misinterpreted, and that he was focused on trying to find answers to the most immediate measures to mitigate the virus’s spread.”
Wall Street Journal: “It was written largely by Stephen Miller, the president’s senior policy adviser, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, and overseen by staff secretary Derek Lyons. The three men, all White House staffers since Mr. Trump took office, haven’t been deeply involved in the coronavirus response.”
“Mr. Kushner hasn’t attended a single task force meeting, according to one official who has attended each meeting. Many of the officials who have been working on the issue for weeks said they were cut out or ignored during the speech writing.”
“The result was a speech that White House officials said hit the correct themes, but was riddled with errors.”
“Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s wife Sophie Grégoire Trudeau has tested positive for the coronavirus, the Prime Minister’s Office said late Thursday, saying she will remain in isolation,” the CBC reports.
“Trudeau will also stay in isolation for 14 days, but on the advice of his doctors, will not be tested because he has no symptoms. He plans to address Canadians on Friday.”
Julia Ioffe: “Some 63 million Americans voted for a man who wanted to smash the system to smithereens, either because they felt it wasn’t doing enough for them or because breaking glass just feels so primitively satisfying. Or maybe it’s because the Republican Party has been peddling a dystopian anarchistic anti-government pipe dream to them for the last four decades. Now, it turns out, a functioning government is a good thing to have when a global pandemic arrives on your shores. It turns out that maybe reforming an imperfect system is wiser than just taking a sledgehammer to it, better to trust people who have dedicated their lives to being public servants than trashing them in favor of a one-man, megalomaniacal savior, better to have a functioning system than dancing on its rubble while crowing about the death of the ‘deep state’—or ‘the political establishment.'”
“To those 63 million Americans, I say this: you wanted to smash the system and you got what you wanted—in spades. Now we will all have to pay the price.”
Amy Walter: “The one constant in these last three and a half years has been chaos. Almost every week, there is an event, issue or moment that looks as if it may upend our current political stasis or rattle the economy. But so far, nothing, not a government shutdown, nor impeachment, nor a tempestuous tweet, has been enough to spook the markets or alter opinions of this president. Meanwhile, our media cycle and attention spans have gotten shorter and shorter, which only serves to lessen their long-term repercussions.”
“Coronavirus, however, may be our first truly disruptive event in this so-called disruptive era.”
Wall Street Journal: “Coronavirus has challenged Mr. Trump’s unusual leadership style—blunt, improvisational and shoot-from-the-hip—like no other issue to confront his administration.”
“As a viral pandemic has spread across continents with a severity and deadliness that world leaders say demands a global response, President Trump has increasingly turned inward,” the Washington Post reports.
“He has imposed travel restrictions on one-fourth of the world’s population while criticizing other nation’s response efforts, refused to meet with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, attacked his handpicked Fed chairman and defied the warnings of his own public health experts.”
“His handling of the crisis, including a surprise decision to restrict travel from Europe, is drawing criticism both at home and abroad as leaders warn that Trump’s go-it-alone approach is doing harm to an already fraught situation.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) announced that she has married Tim Mynett, a political consultant she has worked with and been romantically linked to, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.
“Omar announced their marriage in an Instagram post that did not name Mynett. The Minneapolis Democrat finalized her divorce from husband Ahmed Hirsi in November, several months after Mynett’s wife, a Washington, D.C., physician, alleged in court filings that he left her after becoming romantically involved with Omar.”
“Both Omar and Mynett had denied having an affair.”
“In the most scripted of presidential settings, a prime-time televised address to the nation, President Trump decided to ad-lib — and his errors triggered a market meltdown, panicked travelers overseas and crystallized for his critics just how dangerously he has fumbled his management of the coronavirus,” the Washington Post reports.
“Even Trump — a man practically allergic to admitting mistakes — knew he’d screwed up by declaring Wednesday night that his ban on travel from Europe would include cargo and trade, and acknowledged as much to aides in the Oval Office as soon as he’d finished speaking.”
“Futures for the Dow Jones industrial average fell in real time with virtually each word Trump uttered.”
“Trump — who believed that by giving the speech he would appear in command and that his remarks would reassure financial markets and the country — was in ‘an unusually foul mood’ and sounded at times ‘apoplectic’ on Thursday as he watched stocks tumble and digested widespread criticism of his speech.”
“US-led coalition airstrikes are underway against multiple Iranian-backed militia sites in Iraq,” CNN reports.
“The strikes come one day after the US assessed an Iranian-backed group was responsible for a rocket attack on a base where coalition forces are located, killing two American service members and one British service member.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.