“President Trump hosted nearly 20 House Republicans at the White House on Friday to talk about rebuilding the economy amid the coronavirus pandemic ― and not one of them wore a mask or practiced social distancing,” the HuffPost reports.
Trump Goes Without Mask Around WWII Vets
President Trump said he didn’t wear a face mask while honoring elderly World War II veterans—just one day after his personal valet tested positive for the coronavirus—because he was “very far away from them” and “they’re so pure, it will never happen,” the Daily Beast reports.
Said Trump: “Plus the wind was blowing so hard in such a direction that if the plague ever reached them, I’d be very surprised.”
Asked why Trump didn’t wear a mask while honoring the veterans, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said, “They made the choice to come here.”
Trump Keeps Flouting Coronavirus Protocols
Washington Post: “The president appeared puzzled that the aide, Katie Miller, the press secretary for Vice President Pence, had contracted the virus ‘out of the blue’ after testing negative several times under a routine White House screening program put in place last month.”
“During the event with GOP members, Trump suggested ‘the whole concept of tests isn’t great,’ but he declared that he was satisfied with the procedures that are in place to protect him and his top aides.”
Said Trump: “I don’t worry about things. I do what I have to do. We’re dealing with an invisible situation. Nobody knows. All you can do is take precaution and do the best that you can.”
Emails Show White House Officials Buried CDC Report
“The decision to shelve detailed advice from the nation’s top disease control experts for reopening communities during the coronavirus pandemic came from the highest levels of the White House,” according to internal government emails obtained by the Associated Press.
“The files also show that after the AP reported Thursday that the guidance document had been buried, the Trump administration ordered key parts of it to be fast-tracked for approval.”
Trump Complains Pelosi Is Not In DC When She Is
“President Trump and White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Friday attacked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for being in California rather than Washington — a sign, they both said, of her unwillingness to work on behalf of Americans,” the Washington Post reports.
“As it turns out, the California Democrat was in fact in Washington, where she was visible to reporters at the Capitol.”
Stephen Miller’s Wife Was Staffer Who Tested Positive
President Trump just confirmed that Katie Miller is the staffer to Vice President Mike Pence who was confirmed to be infected with the coronavirus, CBS News reports.
She is the wife of senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller.
Trump’s Cabinet Largely Sidelined During Crisis
NBC News: “Missing from roles in the official White House Coronavirus Task Force, many of Trump’s Cabinet secretaries have remained less than fixated on rapid pandemic response.”
“A review of efforts of several Cabinet departments with tools and enforcement powers to address the pandemic found delayed and uneven assistance or support.”
Pence Aide Tests Positive
“An aide to Vice President Mike Pence has tested positive for coronavirus,” CNBC reports.
“Pence was scheduled to travel to Des Moines, Iowa, in the morning, but his departure from Andrews Air Force Base was delayed by nearly an hour as staff dealt with news of the diagnosis. Reporters traveling with Pence said several staffers disembarked from Air Force Two just before takeoff.”
Trump Created Legal Mess Moving Residence to Florida
When President Trump changed his official residence to Mara-a-Lago in Palm Beach it created a legal mess, the Washington Post reports.
“The property is taxed as a private club — not as a residence, according to Palm Beach County property appraiser records. Trump’s own attorney assured local officials in Palm Beach before they voted to approve the club in 1993 that he would not live there.”
Trump may soon be forced to make a choice: “Stop operating Mar-a-Lago as a club and make it a single-family home again or change his official domicile to someplace else.”
Trump Says ‘Jury Is Still Out’ on FBI Director’s Future
“President Trump voiced uncertainty Friday over the future of his FBI director, Christopher Wray, a day after the Justice Department moved to throw out the guilty plea of the president’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn,” the Washington Post reports.
Said Trump: “It’s disappointing. Let’s see what happens with him. Look, the jury’s still out.”
‘Those Are Empty Sir’
Vice President Mike Pence was caught on a hot mic in a public relations stunt delivering empty boxes of “medical gear.”
Update: BuzzFeed News says the video was edited to imply Pence carried the empty boxes, which he did not.
Flynn May Soon Visit White House
Washington Post: “Trump advisers are discussing deploying the Flynn case as a weapon against putative Democratic nominee and former vice president Joe Biden this fall — and also are contemplating a possible visit to the White House by Flynn in the coming weeks.”
One Question for Michael Flynn
David Ignatius: “With the Justice Department’s move Thursday to drop its case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn, it’s useful to go back to a basic question: If Flynn did nothing wrong when he called the Russian ambassador on Dec. 29, 2016, the day President Barack Obama imposed sanctions on Russia for interfering in the presidential election, why did he conceal it?”
Lawfare: “The government’s 20-page brief is not an honest document—perhaps the reason that it is signed only by Timothy Shea, the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia—and not a single one of the career prosecutors who worked on the case.”
Trump Tightens Grip on Coronavirus Information
Washington Post: “Trump’s information-control tactics are being replicated in states across the country, where governors are lifting stay-at-home orders against the advice of public health officials…”
“Administration officials say the moves reflect a shift, driven by Trump, away from focusing on the health challenges caused by the pandemic and toward restarting economic activity and pulling the country out of recession. The evolution is being driven in part by the political calendar, with just six months before voters decide the president’s fate.”
For members: Trump’s False Choice Between the Economy and Death.
Does the Coronavirus Task Force Even Matter?
“In ordinary times in Washington, it would matter a lot. It is hardly unusual for presidents to create new structures to navigate a crisis, gathering experts who can distill the work of departments and intelligence agencies and drive the execution of complex plans across a sprawling federal bureaucracy,” the New York Times reports.
“It is why Harry S. Truman created the National Security Council to navigate Cold War realities in 1947, and why Dwight D. Eisenhower moved the science adviser into the White House a decade later to deal with the space race.”
“It is why John F. Kennedy met in secret with a committee of experts during the outset of the Cuban missile crisis to decide whether war or diplomacy was the right path.”
“But the coronavirus task force, led by Vice President Mike Pence, clearly had a different role. It had a psychological resonance with a scared public that wants to see and hear from medical experts after weeks of Mr. Trump’s playing down the effect of the virus. In the end, it was that public-facing role, rather than the expertise the task force gathered or the recommendations it issued to the states, that led Mr. Trump to flip-flop.”
Melinda Gates Gives Trump a ‘D-Minus’
Melinda Gates gave the Trump administration a “D minus” for its response to the coronavirus pandemic, Politico reports.
Said Gates: “We need leadership at the national level. We lost two months almost now in terms of our national response.”
When You Believe Your Own Lies
Susan Glasser: “When I went to college, we used to joke during exam period that you were really in trouble when you started to lie to yourself and believe it. The President and at least some of his most fervent supporters appear now to be in the lying-to-yourself-and-believing-it stage of the pandemic. Truth has become so inconvenient that it’s better left aside for some alternate, less inconvenient reality. This is, of course, not the first time in the Trump Presidency, or even the first time during this pandemic, that there has been such a gap, but it appears to be a moment when there is a widening and very likely unsustainable gulf between Trumpian truth and what is actually happening.”
“That’s because the numbers are the numbers and, for Trump and for America, they look terrible… Trump appears to me to be increasingly terrified at the very real prospect of losing in November, as both national polls and surveys in battleground states currently show him doing.”
McEnany Called Trump an ‘Inauthentic’ Republican In 2015
New White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was a harsh critic of then-candidate Donald Trump before she became a fierce advocate for him, including calling comments he made about Mexican immigrants in 2015 “racist,” CNN reports.
Before becoming a prominent pro-Trump commentator during his first campaign, McEnany said it was “unfortunate” and “inauthentic” to call him a Republican.
She also called him a “showman” and “not a serious candidate,” adding “I don’t want to claim this guy.”
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