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Vice President Mike Pence was put in an awkward position this week when ABCs Byron Pitts asked if he speaks with God about deaths caused by the Trump administrations response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Nightline co-host prefaced his question Wednesday evening by claiming that he was not being political.

I have a final question for you, Mr. Pitts said, NewsBusters reported. I ask this not in a political way, but for you, sir, like so many of us in our nation, are you a person of deep faith. No one doubts that. When you talk to God in your moments alone, do you find yourself worrying at all that people you represent and care deeply about have died and will die who did not need to because of steps the federal government did not take soon enough?

Mr. Pence paused and collected himself before answering.

Well, thank you for mentioning that we are talking about one American at a time and I promise you, thats the way President Trump thinks of this, its the way I think of it, he replied. We wanted the American people to see the numbers so that we understand the challenging days that lie ahead, but I want people to know that our future is in your hands, that if every one of us will do and put into practice the Guidelines for America that we can bring those numbers down.

The vice president added that America will get through this and well come out stronger than ever before.

The Trump administration has repeatedly rejected the premise that it did not take the contagion, which originated in China, seriously as it spread around the globe.

Officials have cited at least 56 key decisions it made at the pandemics outset that saved American lives.

Some include:

The only thing we werent prepared for was the media, Mr. Trump recently said when asked a question on coronavirus preparedness by NBC News White House correspondent Kristen Welker. The media has not treated it fairly. Ill tell you how prepared I was: I called for a ban for people coming in from China long before anybody. It was your network, I believe they called me a racist because I did that.

Read more:
Mike Pence asked if he talks to God about coronavirus deaths caused by slow federal response - Washington Times

Republicans are moving quickly to potentially jam Democrats into accepting an extension of small business programs without addressing other Democratic priorities. A spokesman for Schumer said theres been no negotiations thus far with Schumer and Small Business Committee ranking member Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.).

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he's spoken to all four House and Senate party leaders about sending $250 billion to the program. And McConnell said he intends to pass new relief as soon as Thursday without a roll call vote.

"It is quickly becoming clear that Congress will need to provide more funding or this crucial program may run dry. That cannot happen," McConnell said. Congress needs to act with speed and total focus to provide more money for this uncontroversial bipartisan program.

House Democratic leaders initially expressed private opposition to the idea. They have been resistant to piecemeal extensions and want additional money for state and local governments and an expansion of unemployment benefits for several more months, according to those sources.

But Pelosi seemed open to the idea Tuesday afternoon, saying in an interview on CNN that it was clear the small business program needs more funds immediately. But the speaker, who spoke to Mnuchin earlier Tuesday, said there would have to be "considerations" to ensure that women and minority-owned businesses had equal access to the funds.

"We want to make sure that the program is administered in a way that does not solidify inequality in how people have access to capital but instead [is a] benefit to everyone who qualifies for it," Pelosi said on CNN.

Still, Democrats complained they were blindsided by Sen. Marco Rubios (R-Fla.) tweets about fast action and McConnell's statements about spending hundreds of billions of new dollars with two days' notice. A spokesman for Schumer said the Democratic leader had not spoken to McConnell before the announcement, and that Rubio had not spoken to Cardin.

"I was a little taken aback that Sen. McConnell made this announcement without talking to Sen. Schumer or anyone else on the Democratic side of the aisle," said Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) on Tuesday afternoon in an interview. "Just to announce that youre going to do something is not the right approach. But I think everybody would support trying to do something for small business."

With the Senates pro forma session scheduled for Thursday and the House scheduled for a Friday session, the Senate has an advantage simply on timing.

Still, House Democrats felt jammed by McConnells Senate majority on the $2 trillion phase three bill in March and may look darkly on an attempt to one-up them again. Its also possible that a single House member could object to passing the extension via voice vote and demand lawmakers fly back to Washington to vote in person, something congressional leaders desperately want to avoid.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who tried and failed to require House members to take a recorded vote on the massive $2 trillion emergency package two weeks ago, re-upped on Tuesday one of his earlier tweets on the constitutional requirements for a House quorum.

Similarly, a single senator could fight the plans. But one leading conservative, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), would not fight a clean extension of the small business program, according to a person familiar with his thinking. Another conservative senator that sometimes objects to speedy passage of new spending, Rand Paul (R-Ky.), did not have an immediate comment.

And without quick action, Rubio warned that fear would wrack small businesses that are applying for the oversubscribed program.

We have days, NOT weeks to address this, Rubio said on Twitter.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said that the House move quickly to approve the bill after Senate package "and provide confidence to small businesses across the country that their government will be there for them."

Pelosi made clear Tuesday that she considers Mnuchin's request an "interim package" and still plans to pursue another massive legislative package that would expanded unemployment benefits, include another round of direct cash payments and increase funding for state and local governments.

The small business program is popular and may actually be able to be extended without a roll call vote. That would defer debate on other ideas, from Schumers proposed pay bumps to grocery clerks and other essential employees to Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) rehiring program for idled workers to President Donald Trumps $2 trillion infrastructure proposal.

And the Trump administration will get to hash out the unfolding crisis and the congressional response as the week unfolds. House Democrats will receive a coronavirus briefing from Vice President Mike Pence and other top officials on Wednesday, a rare moment of bipartisanship between the House majority and an administration it is often battling.

The briefing will be conducted via conference call and will last about 45 minutes, according to an invitation obtained by POLITICO. In addition to Pence, other key officials leading the coronavirus response will join, including Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx and Rear Adm. John Polowczyk.

Pence spokeswoman Katie Miller tweeted that the vice president would also do calls with House Republicans, Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans on Thursday. Senate Republicans also spoke to Fauci and Mnuchin last week in a conference call.

A major topic of the briefing is expected to be efforts by federal officials to deliver desperately needed personal protective equipment to states whose hospitals are being crushed by an influx of coronavirus patients.

In a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, senior administration officials said they are working with the private sector to ship millions and millions of masks from countries in Asia to address the mask deficiency and working with private companies to increase domestic productions. They also said they expected the United States would be able to deliver 100,000 new ventilators in the next 100 days and that testing has increased in the past four weeks from 2,500 tests a day to 125,000 tests a day.

Polowczyk has been leading the effort at the federal level, coordinating a fleet of cargo planes to bring face masks, gowns, gloves and ventilators from overseas to help replenish rapidly depleting U.S. supplies. But the overall effort has been beset by bureaucratic roadblocks, miscommunication and charges of political favoritism by state leaders.

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) has been hosting near-daily calls during the week in an effort to keep members informed and connected as Congress is out of session for an extended period to prevent the spread of the virus on Capitol Hill.

On a caucus call Monday that featured former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, Pelosi said the next coronavirus relief bill could easily cost more than $1 trillion.

Pelosi wants to begin working on a new more comprehensive bill immediately and is still talking as if the House could come back into session later this month to vote on it, although many lawmakers are increasingly saying they think thats untenable given the continued spread of the virus across the country.

The California Democrat has also met resistance from some top Republicans, who want to wait, as multiple federal and state agencies are already struggling to implement the policies Congress just passed.

Link:
$350B wasn't enough, Congress says, racing to send billions more to small businesses - POLITICO

President Donald Trump in the White House press briefing room on Friday.

Win McNamee/Getty Images

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There is nothing Donald Trump loves more than a rally. Its where he gets to hear hordes of people screaming his name in ecstasy, where he gets to call for the downfall of his enemies, and where he gets to talk, uninterrupted, for hours at a time about any passing thought he chooses. He loves his rallies so much hes done 96 of them since being elected president. The rally is perhaps the only place Donald Trump is truly happy. Or at least, it was.

In mid-March, however, with the coronavirus spreading ever more rapidly, Trump reluctantly announced that hed be canceling his campaign rallies for the foreseeable future, depriving himself of the closest thing our president has to a sanctuary. To make matters worse, Trumps sole source of self-soothing was being ripped from him by the thing he hates more than anything: his job. The country was being ravaged by a pandemic that he was in charge of containing, and a failure to do so could be catastrophic to his reelection chances.

Trumps second instincthis first instinct having been to pretend the outbreak wasnt happening and to tell people the virus would go awaywas to find someone else to take responsibility. And so, just as things were beginning to get too bad to ignore, Trump appointed Mike Pence to lead the White House Coronavirus Task Force.

Not only would his vice president happily obey orders, but any blame for the administrations response efforts could easily be offloaded on Pence and away from Trump. As NBC reported, Trump thought being the public face of the daily White House briefings on the pandemic would come with an onslaught of criticism, people familiar with the matter said.

Then Trump saw how much attention the vice president was receiving, and he decided to start regularly leading the televised daily updates himself. Since March 9, Trump has held 27 coronavirus task force briefings.

And, at least according to any metric Trump cares about, its paying off. Every day he gets to fill airtime across multiple networks, find new reasons to stoke outrage at the national media among his base, and receive some of the best coverage of his presidency. There is nothing a talking head loves more than a president looking stern-faced in a crisis, and Trump has been more than happy to oblige.

Trump at the coronavirus briefing on Monday.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

In a recent article titled Trump Literally Laughed at How He Can Game the Press With His New Tone, the Daily Beast reported that Trumps somber pivot was very much by design:

And over the past three years, the president has periodically remarkedsometimes with a self-aware chuckle or smirkabout how easy it is for him to trigger praise from a typically adversarial press simply by acting nice during a particularly weighty moment.

Its so easy, can you believe it? the president said during a dinner at the White House in early 2017, according to a source who was in the room at the time. All I had to do was be a little nice and do something beautiful [and now theyre] saying all these terrific things about Trump.

Its certainly been paying off. In one CNN segment from mid-March, Dana Bash had nothing but praise for the president.

From the clip:

If you look at the big picture, this was remarkable from the president of the United States. This is a nonpartisanthis is an important thing to note and to applaud from an American standpoint and from a human standpoint. He is being the kind of leader that people need at least in tone today and yesterday, in tone that people need and want and yearned for in times of crisis and uncertainty.

Just a week before, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had stopped holding its own coronavirus briefings because the White Houses task force kept elbowing in to hold their own last-minute pressers. These, led by a failed meat salesman and a man who allowed Indianas HIV crisis to flourish, were naturally given precedence.

While Trump allows medical professionals and other featured players to participate on a rotating basis, everyone knows that Trump is the star. He leads the briefings, he fields the questions (even going so far as to prevent Anthony Fauci from providing answers that might embarrass him), and he gets the praise he craves. While he may be delighted to receive positive, or even respectfully mixed, reviews from the same reporters he publicly excoriates, hes also managed to turn the events themselves into a daily worship session.

By now, everyone knows that the best way and perhaps only way to get Trumps cooperation is to slather him in praise. The sincerity of the compliment makes no difference; all that matters is that its effusive. Three years in, the few government officials who remain are happy to obligeand with millions of lives hanging in the balance, even would-be independent public health experts will do whatever it takes to keep the president from derailing their efforts in a burst of pique.

The result is a daily ritual where, quite literally, the first priority of all the pandemic responders is the boosting of the presidents ego. In poring over Trumps briefings from the past month for the fits of sycophancy anyone who wishes to speak seems required to perform, I found myself with nearly an hour of pure bootlicking. To spare you at least some of the secondhand embarrassment, I trimmed it down to just over three minutes:

Occasionally, truly critical information will be sandwiched between calls to recognize Trump as the one true king. Often, though, each days dose of meaningful new information or policy could have been tossed out in a press release. None of that affects the length or pacing of the show, though, because more than anything these briefings exist simply to fill that cavernous void in Trumps soul where his rallies used to go.

He often speaks for over an hour, rambling his way through a stream of consciousness in the sort of stand-up comedy cadence his rallygoers know and love. Hell take questions from Jim Acosta, giving him an opportunity for some performative media-bashing in the moment and some Twitter material for later. Hell listen to officials prostrate themselves, visibly basking in the warm glow of their stilted praise.

Its not all fun, of course. As much as his media bashing is a performance, he also genuinely despises being questionedespecially when the questions are about unpleasant concrete facts such as the countrys inability to test for the disease as he promised it would, or the chronic failure to deliver masks, ventilators, and other critical gear. Hell often have a tantrum or two, occasionally storming out if things get really bad. For the most part, though, this is the best part of Trumps day.

Meanwhile, Pence, the actual head of the task force, is little more than an afterthought. In a randomly chosen period of seven episodes, Donald Trump overwhelmed his chosen coronavirus leader in speaking time:

Slate

I chose not to include the time Trump spent leaning in to interrupt someone elses podium time, because it felt cruel.

Mike Pence, for his part, knows perfectly well what this is. Over the course of Trumps presidency, Mike Pence has been more than happy to do his bosss bidding, often humiliating himself in the process. And he knows that if he wants to keep his spot in the presidents good graces, he has to perform subservience to an astonishing degree.

If you watch the briefings back to back, one of the things that most stands out is Pences constant crediting of Trump. He refuses to even so much as begin to intimate that he himself might have had some say in anything thats happening related to the task force he leads. Over the course of the week I surveyed, Pence said some variation of as the president said or as the president likes to say or at the presidents direction no less than 38 times in his less than an hour of speaking time.

In fact, Mike Pences brief moments in the spotlight seem to be almost exclusively for the purpose of reminding everyone that hes little more than a go-between. He discusses the task force now and then, but everything eventually always comes back to Trump.

During that same period of seven days, Pences references to Trump beat references to the coronavirus currently ravaging the country at a ratio of roughly 5 to 3.

Slate

Still, despite these displays being largely for and about Trump, people are desperate for information and will continue to tune in. Its the largest, most captive audience Trump has ever had. He may lack the immediate feedback loop of a rally, but hes found a more than adequate replacement in the daily parade of government officials describing the various ways in which theyd die for him. The daily presser has largely stopped being even remotely useful, but like his rallies, now that he has it, its hard to see why hed ever give it up.

Read the original post:
Trump Is the Star of the Coronavirus Show, and Hes Loving Every Minute of It - Slate

Even as the Trump administration slowly finds its footing in the war against Covid-19, one high-profile element of its response remains stubbornly awful: President Trumps performance in the daily news briefings on the pandemic.

Early on, Mr. Trump discovered that he could use the briefings to satisfy his need for everything to be all about him. As the death toll rises, that imperative has not changed. Most nights, he comes before an uneasy public, typically for an hour or more, to spew a thick fog of self-congratulation, political attacks, misinformation and nonsense.

Since Mr. Trump took office, a debate has raged among the news media about how to cover a man-child apparently untethered from reality. But with a lethal pandemic on the prowl, the presidents insistence on grabbing center stage and deceiving the public isnt merely endangering the metaphorical health of the Republic. It is risking the health and lives of millions of Americans. A better leader would curb his baser instincts in the face of this crisis. Since Mr. Trump is not wired that way, it falls to the media to serve the public interest by no longer airing his briefings live.

For those who have managed to avoid these nightly spectacles, it is hard to convey their tragic absurdity. Mr. Trump typically starts by reading a somber statement that he seems to have never seen before. Next come remarks from other administration officials or corporate executives involved in the relief effort, generally laden with praise for the presidents peerless leadership. Vice President Mike Pence is particularly gifted at this.

After the testimonials comes the Q. and A., which is where the president lets his id off the leash. His constant goal seems to be to stress that he is in no way responsible for this nightmare including any glitches in his administrations response. All failures he assigns to past administrations, Democrats, governors, the media and so on.

Some of Mr. Trumps misleading claims are fairy tales about his perfect response to this crisis. On March 15, he reassured the public that his administration had tremendous control over the virus. (No.) On March 17, he claimed to have felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic. (Really?)

Other fabrications are more specific. On April 1, he assured people that safeguards were in place for travelers. Theyre doing tests on airlines very strong tests for getting on, getting off. Theyre doing tests on trains getting on, getting off, he said. (No.)

Testing is a particularly touchy issue. Mr. Trump has claimed that, starting out, his team was burdened by old, obsolete tests inherited from the Obama administration. (No.) In ducking a question about the United States rate of per capita testing, he asserted that Seoul, South Korea, has a population of 38 million. (Try less than 10 million.) He continues to deny reports of testing problems in hard-hit states.

At Mondays briefing, two journalists asked about a new report by the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services indicating that many hospitals were still grappling with testing delays. Mr. Trump first dismissed anyone with the job of inspector general. Did I hear the word inspector general? Really? Suggesting the report was politically motivated, he demanded to know the officials name (Christi Grimm), when she had been appointed (this January) and how long she had served in government. When told she had served in the inspector generals office since 1999, he erupted as if hed uncovered a coup.

Youre a third-rate reporter, and what you just said is a disgrace! he ranted at Jonathan Karl of ABC News, pronouncing, You will never make it!

The closest the president came to addressing the original question was to assert that testing isnt really his problem: Were the federal government! Were not supposed to stand on street corners testing!

He then lectured Fox Newss Kristin Fisher for being so negative. You should say, Congratulations! Great job! Instead of being so horrid in the way you ask the question!

Such scoldings are a staple of the briefings, with Mr. Trump denouncing inquiries he dislikes as gotcha, nasty, threatening or snarky. He tells reporters they should be ashamed for not taking a more positive approach as if they were on hand to flatter.

Public officials critical of the administration are mocked as ungrateful whiners with insatiable appetites. At one briefing, Mr. Trump said hed told the vice president not to call Washington States Jay Inslee or the woman in Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. If they dont treat you right, I dont call, he said. He has made sneering reference to one Republican-in-name-only malcontent (presumably Marylands Gov. Larry Hogan); called Senator Chuck Schumer of New York a disgrace; and accused Illinoiss governor, J.B. Pritzker, of always complaining. He has also repeatedly claimed that New Yorks Gov. Andrew Cuomo had a chance to get 16,000 ventilators a few years ago, and they turned it down. (No.)

Critics of the president may be appalled to witness such behavior. But those inclined to trust him and to view the media as illegitimate may well wind up believing his spin.

Mr. Trump basically acknowledged as much on Monday. The public is starting to find out what an amazing job were doing, he bragged. One of the reasons I do these news conferences, because, if I didnt, they would believe Fake News. And we cant let them believe Fake News.

The president has a captive audience, and he has no intention of missing an opportunity to preen. On March 29, he boasted on Twitter about the terrific TV ratings his briefings were enjoying.

If the cameras were taken away, perhaps Mr. Trump would worry less about putting on a show. Better still, perhaps he would leave the briefings to the officials who have useful information to impart. The daily briefings should be covered consistently, aggressively and accurately. But coverage is not the same as running a live, raw feed of Mr. Trump disgorging whatever he feels in the moment. The events could continue to air on a public service channel, such as C-SPAN, to alleviate concerns about censorship or transparency.

In using his platform to mislead the public, the president is not serving any interest but his own. In facilitating this farce, neither is the media.

Go here to read the rest:
Drop the Curtain on the Trump Follies - The New York Times

As we've known from the very beginning, the Trump administration is just making up its coronavirus response as it goes along, largely because that's how it's done everything else since taking office. That would be a huge problem even if Donald Trump didn't ricochet between denying there's a problem at all and his occasional moments of acting like he knows it's serious.

The latest evidence that everything about the pandemic response is on an ad hoc basis comes in the form of a Politico report on the COVID-19 task force's decision to freeze shipments of coronavirus aid to other countries, now that the administration is slowly realizing there's a huge shortage of medical supplies in the USA. The lede gives a pretty good sense of just how chaotic the situation has been. An administration official called officials in Thailand last week to find out if that country could help send protective gear for medical workers in the US. Funny thing about that!

Trump aides were alarmed when they learned of the exchange, and immediately put the shipment on hold while they ordered a review of U.S. aid procedures.

Nope, nobody had even thought about the matter prior to last week, at least not anyone who could have done something about it.

And because the US still hasn't figured out what a "national response" to the outbreak means, there weren't any orders to ramp up production of personal protective equipment (PPE) like masks, gowns, goggles, and face shields months ago, at the beginning of the outbreak. Surprisingly, the magic of the market hasn't made PPE abundant everywhere it's needed. And so while US hospitals are running short and medical staffs' lives are endangered, we're being treated to reminders that desperately needed supplies were being shipped overseas without any consideration of the domestic need.

We want to be completely clear about this: We aren't saying the US should bogart all its medical supplies for domestic needs and let the rest of the world go to hell -- especially since the virus needs to be stopped worldwide to keep the US safe. We're saying it shouldn't have taken until the end of March for the people in charge to even start thinking about how to balance the domestic need with what's being sent in aid. If production of masks and other PPE had been expanded two months ago, we wouldn't even be looking at an either/or situation.

Bummer Trump eliminated the pandemic plannng team and put the Obama pandemic plan on a shelf to gather dust. But he was too busy deconstructing the administrative state, because big government bad.

Now, beyond the PR problem of being called out for shipping medical supplies to other countries when there's a shortage here, Team Pence also has to contend with a related problem: If the US redirects supplies it's already promised to our allies, then there's yet another reason for them to ignore the US when we ask them for help. And in this pandemic, we're definitely going to need help. As if we'd admit it.

For now, Politico reports, the coronavirus task force is holding up shipments of PPE overseas, to see if any should be redirected to US hospitals, and has also ordered The US Agency for International Development (USAID) to check its existing stockpiles of medical equipment in other countries to see what can be sent back to the US.

Back in early February, the State Department was very proud to announce it was sending a huge shipment of medical supplies to China, because America is nice like that. In a statement, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo bragged about how generous and magnanimous the US was:

Today, the United States government is announcing it is prepared to spend up to $100 million in existing funds to assist China and other impacted countries, both directly and through multilateral organizations, to contain and combat the novel coronavirus. This commitment along with the hundreds of millions generously donated by the American private sector demonstrates strong U.S. leadership in response to the outbreak.

That was a little while before Pompeo insisted everyone had to say "Wuhan coronavirus" to make the disease go away. More recently, that shipment has been criticized as an example of just how badly the administration has handled the outbreak, as in this Monday tweet by Maxine Waters:

You'll be delighted to know, however, that the State Department has a ready answer: that stuff was all donated by private donors, not the US's own Strategic National Stockpile, so NO PROBLEM. One anonymous administration official explained to Politico that way back in ancient history early February nobody in the world knew there might be any larger problem with coronavirus here:

How true this is! After all, when Trump was asked about it at the Davos conference on January 22, the day after the first case of COVID-19 was diagnosed in the US, he explained there simply would not be a pandemic:

To be fair, we were all about 30 years younger two months ago, so how can any of us youngsters say Trump blew it?

In any case, the administration wants you to know that now that the task force has been thinking about this for a week or so, and everything's good:

And Trump has given this a lot of thought too, at least to the extent that he can yell "America First!" at his shambolic coronavirus rallies.

So now we'll be very careful to balance the needs of US medical workers against what those foreigns are asking for, and apart from still not having any overall strategy to allocate scarce supplies, everything should be fine, at least for the highest bidders.

[Politico / CNN / Snopes / LAT]

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Originally posted here:
Mike Pence Found All The Coronavirus Supplies! We Had Mailed Them To Asia, Whoops! - Wonkette