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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.

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

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee continued his criticism of the Trump administration in a national TV appearance Sunday morning, lambasting what he calledthe federal governments lack of leadership during the coronavirus crisis.

This is ludicrous that we do not have a national effort in this, Inslee said on Meet The Press. I mean, the surgeon general alluded to Pearl Harbor. Can you imagine if Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, Ill be right behind you, Connecticut. Good luck building those battleships.'

Inslee said hed like to see a national stay-at-home order, rather than the piecemeal ones put in place so far by states.

Even if Washington gets on top of this fully, if another state doesnt, it can come back and come across our borders two months from now, Inslee said.

Inslee has been calling on President Donald Trump to order manufacturers to switch their production to prioritizethings needed to battle the pandemic, such as masks, face shields, gowns and testing equipment. But Trump has refused. Inslee has resorted to pleading with Washington manufacturers to produce the equipment.

We dont have enough test kits by far in my state or anywhere in theUnited States, Inslee said Sunday. So we governors, Republicansand Democrats, have been urging the president to do what he should, which is if he wants to be a wartime president, be a wartime president. Show some leadership. Mobilize the industrial base of the United States. Thats what we need.

Washington has received only half of the ventilators it has requested from the federal government, according to state officials, andonly a portion of the protective equipment.

Inslee hasclashed with President Donald Trump for weeksover the federal governments response to the crisis.

Last month, after Trump told a group of governors on a conference call that his administration was ready to be the backup for states in crisis, Inslee interjected: We dont need a backup. We need a Tom Brady. Inslee confirmed the dust-up later in the day, when he tweeted:I would have said Russell Wilsonbut no one can be @DangeRussWilson, referring to the Seahawks quarterback.

The next day,at a news conference, Trump lashed out, saying he advised Vice President Mike Pence not to call Inslee and implying that federal aid could be contingent on how Trump, personally, is treated.

Theyre not appreciative to me, theyre not appreciative of the Army Corps, theyre not appreciative to FEMA, Trump said. I say, Mike, dont call the governor of Washington, youre wasting time with him. If they dont treat you right, I dont call.

Inslee responded with another tweet:Im not going to let personal attacks from the president distract me from what matters: beating this virus and keeping Washingtonians healthy.

On Sunday, Inslee said that Washington state has had some success in slowing the growth of the virus, but is a long ways from being out of the woods.

While the president was saying that this was not a problem and that it was a hoax, we were acting to save the lives of our citizens, Inslee said.

How is this outbreak affecting you?What has changed about your daily life? What kinds of discussions are you having with family members and friends? Are you a health care worker who's on the front lines of the response? Are you a COVID-19 patient or do you know one? Whoever you are, we want to hear from you so our news coverage is as complete, accurate and useful as possible.If you're using a mobile device and can't see the form on this page, click here.

Do you have questions about the novel coronavirus?Ask your question in the form below and we'll dig for answers. If you're using a mobile device and can't see the form on this page, ask your question here.You can see questions we've already answered on this FAQ.If you have specific medical questions, please contact your doctor.

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Inslee continues criticism of Trump: Its ludicrous we dont have national effort against coronavirus - Seattle Times

Mike Penceis celebrating the engagement of his daughter Audrey, 24. But people are speculating that he may not be too happy about the fact that the proposal from her college boyfriend,Daniel Tomanelli, took place in the gay-centric town of Provincetown, Mass.

Audrey Pence alongside her father, Vice President Mike Pence, and mother, Karen Pence. (Photo: Getty Images)

The youngest child of the vice president and his wife, Karen, announced her engagement with an Instagram post on Saturday. And although she didnt mention her new fiancs name or their location, theBoston Globe was able to identify fellow Northeastern grad Tomanelli, andRace Point Beach in Provincetown as the backdrop for the proposal.

Rain or shine, Im so glad youll always be by my side, Audrey captioned the slideshow of photos of her with Tomanelli, caught in the rain.

Many commenters congratulated the pair and pointed out that the photos looked straight out of a movie.

Others poked fun at Audrey for getting engaged in a place known for its LGBTQ community, considering her fathers conservative views.

Awww my girlfriend and I also got engaged in Provincetown! Im glad youre finally coming around, one person wrote, while another added, You did it in one of the most famous Gay resort towns in the entire world! Congrats!

Im thrilled that your dad will have to know that you got engaged in the most statistically gay small town in America, someone commented. Another suggested that the Pences should be banned from P-town on principle.

Audreys sister, Charlotte, congratulated the couple on her own Instagram giving her best wishes to the pair and sharing her excitement about adding another brother to the family.

Congratulations, Charlotte wrote, super excited to have you join our family!

Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:

Parents outraged at first-grade teachers decision to read book about gay bunnies to students Chelsea Clinton slams President Trumps embrace of white nationalism & anti-Semitic & Islamophobic hate Owner of Texas gay club under fire for attending Trump rally: Trash

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Mike Pence's daughter Audrey gets engaged in 'gay-centric ...

No one with any sense of history would ever compare Vice President Michael Pence with Dwight Eisenhower. Which makes sense: Pence is a trained lawyer and lifelong politician astutely tuned to Indianas deep red (and nearly paleolithic) convictions, while Eisenhower was a West Pointer and career military officer who led an alliance that defeated fascism. Pence is a former radio talk show host, Tea Party conservative and born again Christian, while Eisenhower was a middle-of-the-road Republican anddespite his strict Mennonite upbringinga religious skeptic who only hesitantly, and late in life (at the age of sixty-three), became a Presbyterian.

Perhaps as crucially, comparing the two not only contradicts everything we know of the personalities and talents of Michael Richard Pence and Dwight David Eisenhower, it sends eminent historians scrambling for their intellectual exits. Mike and Ike not only have different backgrounds and experiences, but theyre also not even in the same phylumthis isnt apples and oranges, historians sniff, its birds and mammals. Pence serves as the soft-as-a-pillow number two to a screeching and bleeding eagle, while Ike was a healthy wildebeest, snorting his way to the head of the herd. The former is a beak-open fledgling, the latter was a national icon.

And yet.

And yet Mike Pence and Dwight Eisenhower have a singular, and indispensable, talent in common: both know how to talk to the press. Eisenhowers abilities were legion and are a celebrated part of his iconography. Eisenhowers rhetoric was anything but soaring. Quite the opposite: he was terrible. His press conference performances were so bad that they became the butt of journalism jokes. Ikes pronouncements were riddled with puzzling turns of phrase, his explanation of administration thinking befuddled and opaque, his murder of English syntax a punchline in the political commentary (The only thing I know about war, he once said, was two things). There was never a shortage of examples: Eisenhower gave 193 press conferences in his eight years as presidenta record that has stood for sixty years.

But there are those who argue that while Ike was terrible during press conferences, he was also brilliant. Ike was the anti-Trump; he rarely (and never inadvertently) told a lie, tiresomely provided exhaustive but incomplete information, never bragged or blamed, never publicly insulted a reporterand rarely delved into the details of public policy. His press conferences were paeans to his most fundamental belief: that no information is far better than bad information. His goal was to practice political theater, his press conferences a kind of performance art expressing (in turn) calm demeanor, serious concern, barely concealed irritability and quiet reassurance. Through all of it, the press never really knew what Eisenhower was thinking: which was the whole point. Eisenhowers gift was to not say anything at all, and in as many words as possible.

As Evan Thomas, a historian and journalist, explains in his book, Ikes Bluff, that Eisenhowers aides worried incessantly about what he would tell the press in times of crisis. He needed to be briefed more thoroughly on what he would say, they suggested, while touching on details that would enhance his credibility. The United States was in the middle of the Cold War, they needlessly reminded him, and a misstep could be costly. In 1955, during the Formosa Crisis (when China threatened to invade Taiwan), Eisenhower press secretary James Hagerty warned Ike that he needed to rehearse his answers to questions about the crisis, including the most important one of whether the U.S. was prepared to go to war. Eisenhower waved him away: Dont worry Jim, Ike said, if the question comes up Ill just confuse them. And so he did, going on and on without saying much of anything at all, what Thomas describes as a classic of obfuscation.

Mike Pence has that same indispensable talent, honed through years of political experience. Like Eisenhower, Pence goes on and on without really answering the question hes asked. At the same moment, he expertly provides a deft ability to convince us that hes the most capable and informed policymaker in Washington, even when (manifestly) hes not. Like Eisenhower, who met the press weekly, Pences talent is regularly testedthrough his appearances at the now almost daily press briefings on the coronavirus.

Pence has met the challenge, his abilities displayed during the coronavirus press briefing this last Saturday, when (with Trumps exit), he expertly navigated the mines the press buried for him. Known for his pandering to the president, Pence is not above doing so with reporters. When asked whether the administration would provide guidance on prospective educational closings, Pence was nearly fulsome. Well, its a terrific question, he said, and then went on to talk about the importance of standardized testingwhich was not an answer, of course, but good enough for reporters. A second question (from the same reporter) was more pointed.

Did Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases or the Surgeon General (both of them standing behind Pence) have anything to say about President Trumps controversial claim that a combination of two certain medications [hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin] have a real chance to become one of the real game-changers in the history of medicine? Should Americans be taking medical advice from the president? Pence might have deferred to Fauci, but instead held forth for a full, and somnolent, three minutes on: our great pharmaceutical companies, the possibility of finding a coronavirus vaccine going forward, the off label use of certain drugs that may provide relief from virus symptoms, the importance of federal-state cooperation and the hopefulness that Trump feels about these time-honored and tested (and compassionate) medicines. That is to say, Pences answer was an Ike-like masterpiece of garbled syntax, incoherent comparisons and earnest obfuscation; he said a whole-hell-of-a-lot without saying anything at all.

This highlights why Trump may well have given Pence the role of being the administrations coronavirus czar in the first placea decision that brought derisive hoots from both progressives and a handful of quietly skeptical Republicans. Mike Pence literally does not believe in science, Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) intoned. It is utterly irresponsible to put him in charge of U.S. coronavirus response. Perhaps. But Trump didnt appoint Pence, a self-described evangelical Catholic, because the Vice President believes in science, he appointed him because hes underrated, unsophisticated and thoroughly boring. Which, when compared to Trump, is exactly what America needs. Put more simply, Trump screwed up in reverse: he actually got something right. Like Ike, Mike understands that Americans dont want to hear the bad news and its his job to make sure they dont get it.

Mark Perry is a contributing editor at The American Conservative and an author whose books include Partners In Command and The Most Dangerous Man In America. Follow him on Twitter @markperrydc

Image: Reuters

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Mike Pence Is Not Dwight EisenhowerExcept When It Comes to Talking to the Press - The National Interest