The President’s Sabotage of the COVID-19 Response

Resigned but still blind Mike Pence aide Olivia Troye

Trump regarding the pandemic: maybe the pandemic is a good thing because 

he does not have to shake hands with all the

 “disgusting people” at his rallies and public events 

The New York Times reports that a widely criticized CDC recommendation to not test asymptomatic people who had been exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus was in fact not written by the CDC. It was written by the president and posted on the CDC website under the CDC’s name. The president’s intent was to deceive the American people. That amounted to sabotage of the pandemic response for the sake of the president’s personal political advantage. That some people may needlessly die due to the deceit was of no apparent concern. The overriding concern was re-election. The NYT writes:

A heavily criticized recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month about who should be tested for the coronavirus was not written by C.D.C. scientists and was posted to the agency’s website despite their serious objections, according to several people familiar with the matter as well as internal documents obtained by The New York Times.

The guidance said it was not necessary to test people without symptoms of Covid-19 even if they had been exposed to the virus. It came at a time when public health experts were pushing for more testing rather than less, and administration officials told The Times that the document was a C.D.C. product and had been revised with input from the agency’s director, Dr. Robert Redfield.

But officials told The Times this week that the Department of Health and Human Services did the rewriting and then “dropped” it into the C.D.C.’s public website, flouting the agency’s strict scientific review process.

‘That was a doc that came from the top down, from the H.H.S. and the task force,’ said a federal official with knowledge of the matter, referring to the White House task force on the coronavirus. ‘That policy does not reflect what many people at the C.D.C. feel should be the policy.’”

The NYT goes on to point out that the recommendation contained several basic errors that CDC experts would not have made. Specifically, the president’s document “testing for Covid-19,” not testing for the virus that causes it. Other errors were inconsistencies with the C.D.C.’s known policy positions, marking the origin of the document as not from the CDC.

In addition to that fake CDC document, the president had released a second fake CDC document that fits with how the president want to deal with the pandemic. That document argued for “the importance of reopening schools,” which contradicted the C.D.C.’s typical neutral, scientific tone. Other important self-serving deceit of the public by the president was his political appointees’ meddling with the CDC’s weekly science reports on scientific research. 

How incredibly hard it is for even honest, principled republicans to see truth & reality

In a related but frightening story, Mike Pence aide Olivia Troye has resigned, blasting the president for his failure to even try to deal with the pandemic in the public interest. Troye was the Pence adviser for homeland security until late July. She had coordinated the Pence pandemic response effort and was intimately familiar with what the president was concerned with. His concern was his re-election, not protecting the public or dealing with the pandemic. The New Yorker Magazine writes:

“When I spoke with Olivia Troye on Thursday afternoon, she sounded more than a little scared. She was about to go public with a scorching video, in which she would denounce President Donald Trump and his stewardship of the country during the coronavirus pandemic. Troye, who served as Vice-President Mike Pence’s adviser for homeland security until late July, has witnessed the Administration’s response to the crisis, as Pence’s top aide on the White House coronavirus task force. She had seen Trump rant in private about Fox News coverage as his public-health advisers desperately tried to get him to focus on a disease that has now killed some two hundred thousand Americans. She had decided that Trump was lying to the American public about the disease, and that “words matter, especially when you’re the President of the United States,” and that it was time to speak out. She was nervous and scared and worried for her family and her career. But she plunged ahead anyway.

I asked about her firsthand observation of the President during the crisis. She said that Trump was “disruptive.” That he could not “focus.” That he was consumed by himself and his prospects in November. “For him, it was all about the election,” Troye told me. “He just can’t seem to care about anyone else besides himself.”

Troye joined the coronavirus task force when it was first established, in late January, before any Americans had died from covid-19. Her experience on it, Troye told me, convinced her that Trump’s handling of the situation—the conscious spreading of disinformation, the disregard for the task force’s work—had made the crisis far worse for Americans. She warned about the President’s push for a vaccine before the November election and said that she did not trust him to do the right thing for the country’s health and safety. “What I’m really concerned about is if they rush this vaccine and pressure people and get something out because they want to save the election,” she said.

In the end, this is what struck me most during my conversation with Troye: she is young, only forty-three years old, with a long career ahead of her, and she was willing to put it all on the line publicly, whereas people like Mattis and Kelly were not. That contrast could not have been more stark as I read a Coats Op-Ed in the Times that published the same day as Troye’s video. Coats, clearly referring to Trump’s recent undermining of faith in the upcoming election, said that a national commission should be established by Congress to insure confidence in this fall’s voting. Coats never once referenced Trump by name, and he has never publicly come forward to share with Americans his misgivings about the President. Why not? He is a veteran U.S. senator and a former U.S. ambassador who closed out his career as the head of the massive U.S. intelligence bureaucracy. What does he have to risk?”

What is frightening about this not just the president’s lack of concern for the safety of the American people. Just as frightening is how long it took for Troye to reach the breaking point. But even now she still cannot fully understand the situation she operated in. Her mind traps her in a false reality. 

After her video criticizing the president came out, Pence said that she lacked moral courage to bring her complaints to him and the coronavirus team. He dismisses Troye as just another disgruntled employee with nothing of importance or truth to say and no moral courage for having resigned in public protest. By contrast, Troye still believes that Pence is a decent, honest person doing the best he can under difficult circumstances. She simply cannot see that Pence is a willing participant in the president’s cynical deceit-based pandemic strategy in service to his re-election effort. Pence and his boss are the ones with no moral courage, not Troye. 

Here is the problem in a nutshell: A principled, morally courageous person like Troye acted out of principle and destroyed her career in politics. Nonetheless, she still remains significantly blind to the reality she was immersed in. She still sees Pence as blameless in all of this. In view of that scary reality, how many less honest or less principled republicans who still support the president are there who can bring themselves to at least partially see the reality of what they are doing like Troye did? My guess is maybe ~3%, maybe less. Even people like Coats, Mattis and Kelly did not have the guts to come forward. They have far less to lose than Troye had. Moral courage among hard core republican partisans is a precious and rare thing. 

This exemplifies why the president’s supporters and enablers still support and enable this awful human being. That being, our president, likes the pandemic because he does not have to shake hands with all those “disgusting people” at his rallies and public events. 

So, who are the disgusting people here? People like Troye who wrecked her career once she finally could not take it any more? The president’s enablers, e.g., his liar aides and the complicit republicans in congress? 

What about his supporters? These people are trapped in their false realities by their tribal minds just like Troye was. Maybe they are not disgusting. Maybe they are just deceived, manipulated, used and betrayed people who for the most part are not disgusting.