Friday, March 13, 2020

'I don't take responsibility': Trump shakes hands and spreads blame over coronavirus

David Smith in Washington, The Guardian•March 13, 2020


'I don't take responsibility': Trump shakes hands and spreads blame over coronavirusMore

He fingered the microphone and put his lips up close. He shook hands with everyone he could. Donald Trump, who promised you’re going to win so much you’ll get sick of winning, might also just make you sick.

In the White House rose garden on Friday, the US president defied the advice of medical experts standing behind him and behaved like a one-man coronavirus cannon.

Trump declared a national emergency (“two very big words”, said the man known for his misspelled tweets) that would release up to $50bn to combat the pandemic, which this week topped 2,000 cases and had the lamps going out all over America.

Reporters wanted to know whether this 73-year-old man with a poor diet – his former doctor reportedly hid cauliflower in his mashed potatoes – is putting himself and others at risk. Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s press secretary tested positive for coronavirus days after taking part in meetings with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

Should Trump therefore self-isolate? “Well, I don’t know that I had exposure, but I don’t have any of the symptoms,” he replied. “And we do have a White House doctor and, I should say, many White House doctors, frankly. And I asked them that same question, and they said, ‘You don’t have any symptoms whatsoever.’ And we don’t want people without symptoms to go and do the test. The test is not insignificant.”

But later another reporter pushed him harder, noting that a person without symptoms might still be infected. Question: “Are you being selfish by not getting tested and potentially exposing – ”

Trump: “Well, I didn’t say I wasn’t going to be tested.”

Question: “Are you going to be?”

Trump: “Most likely, yeah. Most likely.”

Question: “When do you think that will happen?”

Trump: “Not for that reason, but because I think I will do it anyway. Fairly soon.”

Coronavirus is a crisis of a different magnitude from those faced by Trump before. It has upended daily life and left liberals cursing the cosmic dice: how come Tom Hanks is infected while Trump gets off scot-free?

When the celebrity businessman has his back to the wall, he calls for the cavalry of corporate America. At Friday’s press conference he rolled in business titans to save the day, treating them to plenty of handshakes and little social distancing.

“You’re going to be hearing from some of the largest companies and greatest retailers and medical companies in the world,” he said, presumably hoping to reassure the stock market. “They’re standing right behind me and to the side of me ... they’re celebrities in their own right.”

Trump announced that “drive-thru” testing centers would be set up in parking lots at CVS, Target, Walmart and Walgreens stores.

This, he hopes, will resolve a spectacularly awful time lag in testing kits being made available. America has been put to shame by South Korea.


Trump seems eager to wash his hands of the matter, if not actually wash his hands

The wartime president Harry Truman used to keep a sign on his desk that said: “The buck stops here.” Trump, however, seems eager to wash his hands of the matter, if not actually wash his hands. “Yeah, no, I don’t take responsibility at all, because we were given a set of circumstances and we were given rules, regulations, and specifications from a different time,” he said. “It wasn’t meant for this kind of an event with the kind of numbers that we’re talking about.”

Then Yamiche Alcindor of PBS asked why, in 2018, Trump had dissolved the White House’s National Security Council directorate for global health security and biodefense.

Like a schoolboy caught red-handed, he blustered: “Well, I just think it’s a nasty question because what we’ve done is – and Tony has said numerous times that we’ve saved thousands of lives because of the quick closing. And when you say ‘me’, I didn’t do it. We have a group of people I could – ”

Alcindor followed up. Trump rambled: “It’s the – it’s the administration. Perhaps they do that. You know, people let people go. You used to be with a different newspaper than you are now. You know, things like that happen.”

It is not the first time he has resorted to the word “nasty” when asked a tough question by a woman of colour.

The buck stops here.

'I don't take responsibility': Trump says he's not to blame for persistent delays in coronavirus testing



As the coronavirus outbreak spread worldwide, the United States was far slower to produce test kits than other countries. 

In the news conference, a reporter asked Trump if he took "responsibility" for the shortage, and when he could guarantee that there'd be enough tests for Americans.

"Yeah, I don't take responsibility at all because we were given a set of circumstances and we were given rules, regulations, and specifications from a different time," Trump replied.


I don't take responsibility at all' for lack of coronavirus tests, Trump says

President Donald Trump refused to accept any responsibility for the slow rate of coronavirus testing in the United States, saying on Friday that he was "given a set of circumstances" that wasn't meant for the high numbers of potential COVID-19 infections.

"No, I don't take responsibility at all. Because we were given a -- a set of circumstances, and we were given rules, regulations and specifications from a different time. It wasn't meant for this kind of -- an event with the kind of numbers that we're talking about," Trump responded. 
© Provided by CNBC President Donald Trump in the Rose Garden
 of the White House in Washington, DC, May 16, 2019.

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump refused to accept any responsibility for the slow rate of coronavirus testing in the United States, saying on Friday that he was "given a set of circumstances" that wasn't meant for the high numbers of potential COVID-19 infections.

"What we've done, and one of the reasons people are respecting what we've done, is we've gotten it done very early, and we've also kept a lot of people out," Trump said during a press conference in the Rose Garden, referring to early actions

During the briefing, NBC's Kristen Welker asked Trump whether he took responsibility for the testing lag, which one member of his own task force called "a failing."

"No, I don't take responsibility at all. Because we were given a -- a set of circumstances, and we were given rules, regulations and specifications from a different time. It wasn't meant for this kind of -- an event with the kind of numbers that we're talking about," Trump responded.

In reality, America's low rate of COVID-19 testing has drawn criticism from health experts around the world, who say the slow rate of testing obscures the actual rate of infection in the United States, which is likely far higher than tests have so far confirmed.


During the earliest stages of the outbreak, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention distributed faulty tests to state and local health departments. Once the flawed tests were discovered and discarded, bureaucratic red tape held up the process of granting exemptions to private labs to make their own tests.

As criticism of the Trump administration's coronavirus testing protocol has intensified, and testing in other countries like South Korea has outpaced the U.S. by orders of magnitude, Trump has sought to shift the blame onto his predecessor, Barack Obama.

On Friday, asked about testing rates, Trump brought up the example of the 2009 swine flu, or H1N1 epidemic, in order to criticize Obama and boast of his success.

"If you go back to the swine flu, it was nothing like this, they didn't do testing like this, and they lost approximately 14,000 people. They started thinking about testing when it was far too late," Trump said.

Former Obama administration official Ron Klain, who managed the 2014 Ebola outbreak, disputed Trump's assessment. "The Obama administration tested 1 million people for H1N1 in the first month after the first US diagnosed case," Klain tweeted on Thursday. "The first US coronavirus case was 50+ days ago. And we haven't event tested 10,000 people yet."

This is not the first time Trump has attacked Obama's outbreak response as inadequate, an argument that has political implications as Obama's vice president, Joe Biden, appears increasingly likely to be Trump's 2020 Democratic opponent.

"The Obama administration made a decision on testing that turned out to be very detrimental to what we're doing, and we undid that decision a few days ago so that the testing can take place in a much more accurate and rapid fashion," Trump said at a White House meeting with airline executives in early March.

"That was a decision we disagreed with. I don't think we would have made it, but for some reason it was made. But we've undone that decision."

Yet experts and laboratory trade organizations say there was no "decision," and they don't know what Trump is referring to.

"We aren't sure what rule is being referenced," Michelle Forman, a spokeswoman for the Association of Public Health Laboratories, told The Washington Post in early March.

"To our knowledge, there were some discussions about laboratory developed test rules but nothing was ever put into place. So we are not aware of anything that changed how LDTs are regulated."

Moreover, the rules that govern how testing labs respond to emergencies aren't Obama era rules at all --- they're George W. Bush era rules, part of his administration's post-9/11 counterterrorism policy.

In 2004, Bush signed into law the Project BioShield Act, which permitted the FDA to issue Emergency Use Authorizations to labs during public health crises. If a lab had a new treatment or test that seemed promising, the FDA would fast track its approval process.

But these details do not appear to have hampered Trump.

On Friday, as confirmed U.S. cases topped 1,700, the president again zeroed in on what he said was "a testing problem" that Obama had failed to fix.

"For decades the CDC looked at, and studied, its testing system, but did nothing about it," Trump tweeted early Friday morning. "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," Trump tweeted.

"Their response to H1N1 Swine Flu was a full scale disaster, with thousands dying, and nothing meaningful done to fix the testing problem, until now. The changes have been made and testing will soon happen on a very large scale basis. All Red Tape has been cut, ready to go!" Trump said.

Trump didn't specify what "changes" Obama made. According to experts, there weren't any

---30---
Trump Slams 'Nasty' Question As PBS Reporter Challenges Him On Shutdown Of Pandemic Unit


Mary PapenfussHuffPost•March 13, 2020

President Donald Trump lashed out at a PBS reporter on Friday when she challenged him about the shutdown of a pandemic response unit within the National Security Council in 2018.

After calling journalist Yamiche Alcindor’s question “nasty,” the president claimed he knew absolutely nothing about the topic — and cut her off. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) quickly attempted to jog Trump’s memory by posting a letter on Twitter he’d sent the president nearly two years ago complaining about the Trump administration move.

Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton dissolved the NSC’s Global Health Security team in a controversial decision widely covered by the media. The Obama administration had established the unit after the Ebola outbreak to coordinate the U.S. government’s response to a pandemic.

Alcindor, of “PBS NewsHour,” asked Trump to reconcile the elimination of the pandemic team with his insistence Friday that he takes no responsibility for a critical dearth of testing in the U.S. fight against coronavirus. She noted that officials who had worked in the unit said the White House “lost valuable time” without it.

“I just think it’s a nasty question,” Trump replied. “When you say ‘me,’ I didn’t do it ... You say we did that, I don’t know anything about it.” 

Alcindor pressed: “You don’t know about the reorganization that happened at the National Security Council?” Trump responded: “It’s the administration. Perhaps they do that ... let people go. You used to be with a different newspaper than you are now, you know things like that happen.”

Trump also praised himself, claiming that his top health expert Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has said “innumerous times we’ve saved thousands of lives because of the quick [border] closing.”

Fauci testified before a House subcommittee on Thursday that the ongoing shortfall of coronavirus testing in the U.S. was “a failing.” The “idea of anybody getting it [testing] easily the way people in other countries are doing it, we’re not set up for that. Do I think we should be? Yes.”

When another reporter asked Trump on Friday if he took responsibility for that “failing,” he responded: “Yeah, no, I don’t take any responsibility at all.” He claimed he was hamstrung by “circumstances” and “regulations” and aims to finally ramp up testing now.

In a tweet, Alcindor defended her question as “relevant, fair and truth-seeking.”

Video of my question to @realDonaldTrump today on his administration's disbanding of the White House team responsible for coordinating responses to pandemics.
He called my question nasty & said he knew nothing about it.
I call it a relevant, fair, and truth-seeking question. https://t.co/ncYwqZ0Xtp
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) March 13, 2020

Trump’s “nasty” insult is often directed at strong women. He has called former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), among a number of others, “nasty.”
The WHO has changed its position on coronavirus and pets

Youyou Zhou,Quartz•March 13, 2020

T
ake care, both humans and pets

Yesterday, the WHO’s coronavirus myth-buster page said there was no evidence that animals such as dogs or cats could be infected with virus. Today, that section is gone.

The WHO told Quartz in an email that, “currently, there is no evidence that pets such as dogs and cats have infected humans with Covid-19.”


A conspiracy theory linking the US army to the coronavirus now has official Chinese endorsement

The revised stance comes in the wake of an infected dog being found in Hong Kong. The dog tested positive after remaining with its owners who were sick with the virus. The dog wasn’t showing any clinical signs of the disease, according to a report from World Organisation for Animal Health. There’s no evidence that dogs can spread the disease or that the disease can cause an animal to fall ill, the organization says, though further studies may bring new findings.

The organization advises pet owners infected or susceptible of being infected with the coronavirus to avoid close contact with their pets and have another member of the household care for the animals. If they must look after their pet, they should maintain good hygiene practices and wear a face mask if possible. More information regarding pet health amid the epidemic can be found on their website.


Shelley Rankin, a microbiologist at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, Philadelphia, advises pet owners include animals in their family’s preparedness planning. She told Science, that some animals might be quarantined in a hospital, or at home.
Utah passes new abortion rules, could mean felony charges for doctors and women

MEN IN THE GOVERNMENT VOTED IN FAVOUR


THE WOMEN OF BOTH PARTIES WALKED OUT
The Associated Press,NBC News•March 13, 2020

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah lawmakers passed new regulations on abortion this year, including a measure approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature Thursday that would ban most abortions if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

It comes as abortion opponents around the country hope the Supreme Court will reconsider the landmark ruling with new conservative justices. If the Utah measure goes into effect, it could mean felony charges for a physician or a woman who ended her own pregnancy.

Also headed for GOP Gov. Gary Herbert’s desk is a requirement for abortion clinics to cremate or bury fetal remains. Several states are considering similar measures. Supporters say they allow for more dignity, but opponents argue they chip away at abortion rights.

A third proposal requiring a woman be shown an ultrasound before she could get an abortion was approved by the Utah Senate this week over a walkout protest by all six female lawmakers in the body, both Republicans and Democrats.

T
hat action should be taken seriously, said Herbert, who generally opposes abortion.

“I think it was a loud message and one I think we, as men, ought to take hard look at. Are we listening? Are we getting all the information we need to?” he said. He didn't say whether he would sign or veto any of the bills.

Utah barred abortion after 18 weeks last year, becoming one of several states to adopt strict bans. Like the other measures it has been blocked amid litigation. Many conservatives hope one of those court cases could lead to the overturning of the 1973 case legalizing abortion.

If that happens, the new measure says Utah would ban all abortions except in cases like rape and serious threat to the health of the mother. Supporters say it would prepare the state to end elective abortions if the legal landscape changes.

“This bill is meant to discourage the taking of a human life,” said Republican Rep. Karianne Lisonbee.

Democratic Rep. Suzanne Harrison argued that it would only make it more difficult to get a safe abortion. “This extreme bill will hurt women,” she said. “To be clear, women will die.”

The measure regulating fetal remains, meanwhile, comes after the Supreme Court upheld a similar Indiana law signed by then-Gov. Mike Pence last year. The requirements also apply to miscarriages at medical facilities. Supporters say they create space if people need to grieve, but opponents say the measures stigmatize abortion and can make it harder to provide the proced
Is coronavirus 'just a cold' or a reason to self-quarantine? Trump supporters seem split.
DEPLORABLES TRY TO PRAY AWAY CORONAVIRUS

David Knowles Editor, Yahoo News•March 13, 2020



The worsening coronavirus outbreak gripping the nation has prompted some of President Trump’s closest allies and aides to self-quarantine at home — while other prominent supporters continue to minimize the risk in public.

Ivanka Trump and Attorney General William Barr worked from home Friday, the White House reported, after Australian Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton announced on Twitter that he had tested positive for the coronavirus after developing symptoms of COVID-19. Both the president’s daughter and the Attorney General met with Dutton in Washington on March 5 in Washington.

But when interviewed Friday on “Fox & Friends,” Liberty University president and Trump confidant Jerry Falwell Jr. made his case that fears about the coronavirus have been overblown and are being used against the president.

“It’s just strange to me how many are overreacting. The H1N1 virus in 2009 killed 17,000 people; it was the flu also, I think, and there was not the same hype,” Falwell said. “You just didn’t see it on the news 24/7, and it makes you wonder if there’s a political reason for that. You know, impeachment didn’t work and the Mueller report didn’t work, and Article 25 didn’t work, so maybe now this is their next ... attempt to get Trump.”

H1N1 was an unusually virulent flu virus. COVID-19 is not a form of flu.
President Trump with Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr. (Steve Helber/AP)

Falwell then wondered aloud whether the coronavirus was a “Christmas present” from North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and the Chinese government.

“It really is something strange going on,” he said, his voice hoarse from an apparent cold.

Conservative radio host and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Rush Limbaugh has, for weeks, also been portraying the coronavirus as nothing more serious than the common cold.

“This, I’m telling you, when I tell you — when I’ve told you that this virus is the common cold, when I said that, it was based on the number of cases,” Limbaugh said on his March 11 broadcast. “It’s also based on the kind of virus this is. Why do you think this is ‘COVID-19’? This is the 19th coronavirus. They’re not uncommon.”

In fact, while there are seven different types of coronaviruses that affect humans — some of which do cause more mild cold symptoms — COVID-19 is short for “Coronavirus Disease 2019,” the year it was first identified.

A day later, Limbaugh suggested that the “hype” surrounding the coronavirus was a chance for Trump’s enemies “to destroy the U.S. economy for the benefit of the Democratic Party.”

Robert Jeffress, a Texas preacher who has been one of Trump’s most visible evangelical supporters, as of Friday was planning to hold a signing for his latest book, “Courageous,” at his 13,000-seat First Baptist megachurch in Dallas on Sunday.
Radio personality Rush Limbaugh. (Andrew Harnik/AP)

But the response to the virus from Trump’s most ardent defenders on Capitol Hill has been markedly more cautious.

Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, have gone into self-quarantine after coming into contact with persons who have tested positive for the virus.

Cruz, who first came into contact with a person infected with the virus at the Conservative Political Action Conference, extended his self-quarantine on Friday after learning he had met and shaken hands with a Spanish politician in his office who has since tested positive for COVID-19.

“I’m still not feeling any symptoms. I’m consulting with medical officials. But, for the same reasons I initially self-quarantined — out of an abundance of caution and to give everyone peace of mind — I am extending the self-quarantine to March 17,” Cruz said in a statement. “COVID-19 is a serious public health hazard. All of us should resist panic, and we should listen to the doctors and the science. Medical professionals tell us social distancing is one of the most effective ways to prevent the spread of this virus, and we should take every step possible to protect our health and be safe.”

On Thursday, Graham announced that after spending the weekend at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, he had undergone a test for the virus and gone into self-quarantine. Graham interacted with an aide to Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro who later tested positive for the virus. Trump was also photographed standing next to the official.

In the House, Trump supporters Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., Doug Collins, R-Ga., and Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., have all self-quarantined.

Gaetz’s case has drawn additional interest because he traveled with Trump on Air Force One to a fundraiser in Orlando, and seemed to mock those who had expressed concern over the virus by wearing a gas mask while at work in the Capitol building.



Reviewing the coronavirus supplemental appropriation and preparing to go vote. pic.twitter.com/wjJ4YY4VZz

— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) March 4, 2020

A day after posting the gas-mask photo, Gaetz responded to the news of the first death from coronavirus in Florida, of a person who lived in his district.

“I am extremely saddened to learn of the first fatality on our district from coronavirus, a Northwest Floridian residing in Santa Rosa County. Our prayers are with his family and loved ones during this difficult time,” Gaetz said in a statement. “It is important to know that this individual was quarantined shortly after developing symptoms,” Gaetz continued, adding, “Please continue to take necessary precautions to minimize your exposure to any illness, including coronavirus.”

The president and vice president have not been tested for the coronavirus, according to the White House.

“The President has not received COVID-19 testing because he has neither had prolonged close contact with any known confirmed COVID-19 patients, nor does he have any symptoms, “ White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a Monday statement.

Trump denies disbanding pandemic office, he lies


PBS reporter asks why Trump refuses to take responsibility for the delay in coronavirus testing and why he disbanded the Pandemic Office. Trump's response? "I think that's a very nasty question."

As the United States grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic, President Donald Trump said on Friday that he didn't know "anything about" a reorganization of the National Security Council that dismantled a key pandemics team two years ago. The head of that team, Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer, left suddenly after the team was disbanded in 2018; he had been tasked with how the country responds to a threat like the novel coronavirus. When Trump was asked by the PBS NewsHour's Yamiche Alcindor about whether he took responsibility for the decision, the president called it a nasty question, saying it wasn't him and gesturing to other members of his administration that were part of a group of people that make decisions. "We're doing a great job," he added. The number of cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. has climbed above 1,600, and public health officials have shared concern in recent days that the U.S. does not have enough tests or hospital beds, among other supplies, to handle a widespread outbreak.

Trump Slams 'Nasty' Question As PBS Reporter Challenges Him On Shutdown Of Pandemic Unit


Mary PapenfussHuffPost•March 13, 2020

President Donald Trump lashed out at a PBS reporter on Friday when she challenged him about the shutdown of a pandemic response unit within the National Security Council in 2018.

After calling journalist Yamiche Alcindor’s question “nasty,” the president claimed he knew absolutely nothing about the topic — and cut her off. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) quickly attempted to jog Trump’s memory by posting a letter on Twitter he’d sent the president nearly two years ago complaining about the Trump administration move.

Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton dissolved the NSC’s Global Health Security team in a controversial decision widely covered by the media. The Obama administration had established the unit after the Ebola outbreak to coordinate the U.S. government’s response to a pandemic.

Alcindor, of “PBS NewsHour,” asked Trump to reconcile the elimination of the pandemic team with his insistence Friday that he takes no responsibility for a critical dearth of testing in the U.S. fight against coronavirus. She noted that officials who had worked in the unit said the White House “lost valuable time” without it.

“I just think it’s a nasty question,” Trump replied. “When you say ‘me,’ I didn’t do it ... You say we did that, I don’t know anything about it.” 

Alcindor pressed: “You don’t know about the reorganization that happened at the National Security Council?” Trump responded: “It’s the administration. Perhaps they do that ... let people go. You used to be with a different newspaper than you are now, you know things like that happen.”

Trump also praised himself, claiming that his top health expert Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has said “innumerous times we’ve saved thousands of lives because of the quick [border] closing.”

Fauci testified before a House subcommittee on Thursday that the ongoing shortfall of coronavirus testing in the U.S. was “a failing.” The “idea of anybody getting it [testing] easily the way people in other countries are doing it, we’re not set up for that. Do I think we should be? Yes.”

When another reporter asked Trump on Friday if he took responsibility for that “failing,” he responded: “Yeah, no, I don’t take any responsibility at all.” He claimed he was hamstrung by “circumstances” and “regulations” and aims to finally ramp up testing now.

In a tweet, Alcindor defended her question as “relevant, fair and truth-seeking.”

Video of my question to @realDonaldTrump today on his administration's disbanding of the White House team responsible for coordinating responses to pandemics.
He called my question nasty & said he knew nothing about it.
I call it a relevant, fair, and truth-seeking question. https://t.co/ncYwqZ0Xtp
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) March 13, 2020

Trump’s “nasty” insult is often directed at strong women. He has called former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), among a number of others, “nasty.”


'I don't take responsibility': Trump says he's not to blame for persistent delays in coronavirus testing



As the coronavirus outbreak spread worldwide, the United States was far slower to produce test kits than other countries. 

In the news conference, a reporter asked Trump if he took "responsibility" for the shortage, and when he could guarantee that there'd be enough tests for Americans.

"Yeah, I don't take responsibility at all because we were given a set of circumstances and we were given rules, regulations, and specifications from a different time," Trump replied.


I don't take responsibility at all' for lack of coronavirus tests, Trump says

President Donald Trump refused to accept any responsibility for the slow rate of coronavirus testing in the United States, saying on Friday that he was "given a set of circumstances" that wasn't meant for the high numbers of potential COVID-19 infections.

"No, I don't take responsibility at all. Because we were given a -- a set of circumstances, and we were given rules, regulations and specifications from a different time. It wasn't meant for this kind of -- an event with the kind of numbers that we're talking about," Trump responded. 
© Provided by CNBC President Donald Trump in the Rose Garden


 of the White House in Washington, DC, May 16, 2019.

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump refused to accept any responsibility for the slow rate of coronavirus testing in the United States, saying on Friday that he was "given a set of circumstances" that wasn't meant for the high numbers of potential COVID-19 infections.

"What we've done, and one of the reasons people are respecting what we've done, is we've gotten it done very early, and we've also kept a lot of people out," Trump said during a press conference in the Rose Garden, referring to early actions

During the briefing, NBC's Kristen Welker asked Trump whether he took responsibility for the testing lag, which one member of his own task force called "a failing."

"No, I don't take responsibility at all. Because we were given a -- a set of circumstances, and we were given rules, regulations and specifications from a different time. It wasn't meant for this kind of -- an event with the kind of numbers that we're talking about," Trump responded.

In reality, America's low rate of COVID-19 testing has drawn criticism from health experts around the world, who say the slow rate of testing obscures the actual rate of infection in the United States, which is likely far higher than tests have so far confirmed.


During the earliest stages of the outbreak, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention distributed faulty tests to state and local health departments. Once the flawed tests were discovered and discarded, bureaucratic red tape held up the process of granting exemptions to private labs to make their own tests.

As criticism of the Trump administration's coronavirus testing protocol has intensified, and testing in other countries like South Korea has outpaced the U.S. by orders of magnitude, Trump has sought to shift the blame onto his predecessor, Barack Obama.

On Friday, asked about testing rates, Trump brought up the example of the 2009 swine flu, or H1N1 epidemic, in order to criticize Obama and boast of his success.

"If you go back to the swine flu, it was nothing like this, they didn't do testing like this, and they lost approximately 14,000 people. They started thinking about testing when it was far too late," Trump said.

Former Obama administration official Ron Klain, who managed the 2014 Ebola outbreak, disputed Trump's assessment. "The Obama administration tested 1 million people for H1N1 in the first month after the first US diagnosed case," Klain tweeted on Thursday. "The first US coronavirus case was 50+ days ago. And we haven't event tested 10,000 people yet."

This is not the first time Trump has attacked Obama's outbreak response as inadequate, an argument that has political implications as Obama's vice president, Joe Biden, appears increasingly likely to be Trump's 2020 Democratic opponent.

"The Obama administration made a decision on testing that turned out to be very detrimental to what we're doing, and we undid that decision a few days ago so that the testing can take place in a much more accurate and rapid fashion," Trump said at a White House meeting with airline executives in early March.

"That was a decision we disagreed with. I don't think we would have made it, but for some reason it was made. But we've undone that decision."

Yet experts and laboratory trade organizations say there was no "decision," and they don't know what Trump is referring to.

"We aren't sure what rule is being referenced," Michelle Forman, a spokeswoman for the Association of Public Health Laboratories, told The Washington Post in early March.

"To our knowledge, there were some discussions about laboratory developed test rules but nothing was ever put into place. So we are not aware of anything that changed how LDTs are regulated."

Moreover, the rules that govern how testing labs respond to emergencies aren't Obama era rules at all --- they're George W. Bush era rules, part of his administration's post-9/11 counterterrorism policy.

In 2004, Bush signed into law the Project BioShield Act, which permitted the FDA to issue Emergency Use Authorizations to labs during public health crises. If a lab had a new treatment or test that seemed promising, the FDA would fast track its approval process.

But these details do not appear to have hampered Trump.

On Friday, as confirmed U.S. cases topped 1,700, the president again zeroed in on what he said was "a testing problem" that Obama had failed to fix.

"For decades the CDC looked at, and studied, its testing system, but did nothing about it," Trump tweeted early Friday morning. "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," Trump tweeted.

"Their response to H1N1 Swine Flu was a full scale disaster, with thousands dying, and nothing meaningful done to fix the testing problem, until now. The changes have been made and testing will soon happen on a very large scale basis. All Red Tape has been cut, ready to go!" Trump said.

Trump didn't specify what "changes" Obama made. According to experts, there weren't any


SEE 



Opposition's street protests losing appeal in Venezuela

JORGE RUEDA and SCOTT SMITH, Associated Press•March 11, 2020


Venezuela Opposition
  

A protester carries sign with the Spanish message "Going hungry" during an opposition march in Caracas, Venezuela, Tuesday, March 10, 2020. U.S.-backed Venezuelan political leader Juan Guaido led the march aimed at retaking the National Assembly legislative building, which opposition lawmakers have been blocked from entering, but the march was blocked by police early in its route. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)
 
Opposition political leader Juan Guaido greets supporters during a march before it was blocked by police in Caracas, Venezuela, Tuesday, March 10, 2020. Guaido called for the march aimed at retaking the National Assembly legislative building, which opposition lawmakers have been blocked from entering. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

A protester yells at police blocking an opposition march in Caracas, Venezuela, Tuesday, March 10, 2020. U.S.-backed Venezuelan political leader Juan Guaido is leading a march aimed at retaking the National Assembly legislative building, which opposition lawmakers have been blocked from entering. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)


A man holding a cell phone on a selfie stick covers his face amid tear gas fired by police dispersing an opposition march in Caracas, Venezuela, Tuesday, March 10, 2020. U.S.-backed Venezuelan political leader Juan Guaido lead the march aimed at retaking the National Assembly legislative building, which opposition lawmakers have been blocked from entering. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
A man holding a cell phone on a selfie stick covers his face amid tear gas fired by police dispersing an opposition march in Caracas, Venezuela, Tuesday, March 10, 2020. U.S.-backed Venezuelan political leader Juan Guaido lead the march aimed at retaking the National Assembly legislative building, which opposition lawmakers have been blocked from entering. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — When a re-energized opposition leader Juan Guaidó returned to Venezuela from a world tour that saw him meet President Donald Trump, he turned to a well-worn page in the opposition's playbook for ousting socialist President Nicolás Maduro —- he called a street protest.

But after only a modest number of supporters showed up Tuesday and they were scattered mid-march, ducking tear gas fired by heavily armed security forces, analysts say it is time for Guaidó and his international backers to refine their approach.

While opposition protests drew as many as 1 million participants in 2016, then hundreds of thousands in early 2018 when Guaidó announced plans to oust Maduro, they are now drawing thousands, if that. And none have budged the government. Observers say people are weary, fearful of government supporters and focused on survival amid the country's economic collapse.

“The modest turnout (for Tuesday's protest) once again suggests the need for a pivot in strategy,” said David Smilde, a senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America. “International pressure and street mobilizations are not going to make the Maduro government fall.”

Smilde said Venezuela's opposition, which is backed by roughly 60 nations, should focus on how to force fairness in legislative elections expected later this year and better communicate to followers the need to shift strategies.

Opposition lawmaker Stalin González has been seen on state TV news segments participating in negotiations with Maduro representatives aimed at reforming Venezuela’s elections commission, but Guaidó’s allies have not talked about it.

“Guaidó, Stalin (González) and the others inside their coalition need to speak to the public clearly and say that working for legislative elections is their policy,” Smilde said. “They need to exercise actual leadership to come up with a new path that does not begin with ending” Maduro's presidency.

Guaidó in early 2019 rose to the center of Venezuela's political fray as head of the opposition-dominated National Assembly. He claimed presidential powers under the constitution and vowed to end Maduro's rule, joining with his international backers in arguing that the socialist leader was fraudulently re-elected in 2018 elections.

Despite an initial burst of support for Guidó from the U.S. and more than 50 other nations, Maduro remains in power with control over the country's main institutions, most importantly the military.

Guaidó's latest protest drew only several thousand supporters Tuesday, many dressed in patriotic yellow, blue and red and carrying protest signs comparing Maduro to the coronavirus. The turnout was far short of the huge demonstrations last year.

Opposition leaders on Wednesday showed no signs of shifting their strategy. Lawmaker and Guaidó ally Juan Pablo Guanipa announced a new push to take to the streets. Starting Thursday they will rally in support of health workers followed by a weekend mobilization in the "neighborhoods and barrios, the streets of Venezuela,” he said.

“This country needs sufficient pressure to be generated to bring political change in Venezuela," Guanipa said, without giving details of when or where the demonstrations would happen.

Guanipa did not respond to questions later in the day by The Associated Press about the opposition’s strategy.

Guaidó has said he will refuse to participate in the legislative elections expected later this year if it is overseen by the same elections council dominated by Maduro loyalists.

But even some of his supporters are beginning to second guess his strategy. Henry Ramos, a lawmaker who heads the Democratic Action party, said Tuesday that with a new presidential vote out of reach for now, it is time to start preparing for the congressional elections.

“What are we going to do — stay at home and let the government grab the National Assembly?” Ramos said in a rare public break with Guaidó.

Oscar Vallés, a political analyst and professor at the Metropolitana University in Caracas, said that amid the political stalemate Venezuelans are feeling increasingly disconnected.

“Fewer and fewer Venezuelans are interested in politics,” Vallés said. “They don’t see the opposition's political perspective coming in response to their most urgent and immediate problems.”

José Leonardo García, a shop owner in Caracas, said he is among those who have given up. He said it is dangerous to take to the streets against Maduro's security forces, and it takes time away from scratching out a living.

“When your main concern is eating, taking care of your children, all the rest becomes secondary," García said. "To make matters even worse, no one believes that all these marches will have the effect of ever removing these thugs from power."

Francis Otero, a hairdresser, disagreed. She acknowledged that a march isn't likely to drive Maduro from power, but said it serves its purpose to remind the government of widespread discontent.

“We must remind Maduro that we haven't surrendered," she said.




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Betty White's representative reassures fans she's 'fine' amid coronavirus outbreak


WE KNOW YOU ARE CONCERNED, WE ALL ARE 
BUT SHE IS A TOUGH OLD BROAD

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REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK
2020 Time Capsule

Carlos Barria / Reuters
Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

This afternoon, on the heels of a widely panned formal Oval Office address, Donald Trump assembled a group of scientific and corporate leaders to talk about dealing with the coronavirus. You can watch the whole thing on the White House YouTube channel.

I suspect that we’ll see one line from this conference played frequently in the months ahead. You can watch it starting at around 1:22:00, when reporter Kristen Welker of NBC asks Trump whether he takes responsibility for the lag in making test kits available.

Trump’s reply:
No.
I don’t take responsibility at all.

Narrowly parsed, and in full context, Trump was referring only to the test kits — and was continuing his (fantasized) complaint that rules left over from 2016, under the Obama administration, are the real reason the U.S. has been so slow to respond to this pandemic.

But filmable moments in politics are not always taken in full context, and at their most narrowly parsed logical reading:
They cling to guns and religion
I voted for it, before I voted against it
Basket of deplorables
Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job
Stuff happens” (Donald Rumsfeld on the chaos of post-invasion Iraq)
It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’, is.”
Peace for our time.”

All of these—in full context, and most-sympathetically read—had a meaning you could understand and perhaps defend. None of that context or meaning survived, as those went from being phrases to weaponized symbols.

Will that happen to “I don’t take responsibility at all”? We will soon see.

Other stage business points:
A series of CEOs came to the microphone to describe what their companies were doing to speed testing or help out in other ways. Trump caught the first three or four of them unawares, by shaking their hands as they moved away from the podium. All seemed startled, as you can see in the video.

Then the other CEOs began to catch on, and a following group of them scuttled away from the podium before Trump could grab them for a handshake, or held their own hands clenched together, in a protective prayer-style grasp.

Finally, (at 1:06 in the video) you can see Bruce Greenstein, of the LHC group, surprise Trump with an elbow-bump rather than a hand shake. Trump himself seemed completely oblivious to the idea of social distancing. It was also notable that one speaker after another touched and moved around the same microphone, and put his her hands on the sides of the same podium.
I mentioned earlier today the uneasy and evolving position of Anthony Fauci, who has been the “voice of science” through this episode as he has during previous medical emergencies. The uneasiness lies in the tension between his decades as a respected scientist, and his current role as a prominent member of Team Trump. Can he retain his long reputation as a straight shooter? While maintaining any influence with Trump.

Make what you will of his body language through the events today. (He is at far left in the picture below.)
White House
Also today, I mentioned the inevitable-for-Trump, though inconceivable-in-other-administrations, ritual of Trump subordinates limitlessly praising the goodness and wisdom of their leader. It was striking to see all the CEOs skipping right past that formality.

But if you felt a phantom-limb twinge in the absence of these comments, all you had to do was wait for Mike Pence. You can hear him starting at around 1:07, with comments that began “This day should be an inspiration to every American” and built in earnestness from there.

There was much more from the question-and-answer session, but I don’t want to spoil the experience of discovery for anyone who has not seen it yet.

Two hundred and thirty-five days until the election.
Leah Millis / Reuters

As of today, March 13, 2020—three-plus years into the current administration, three months into public awareness of the coronavirus spread, seven-plus months until before the next election—Anthony Fauci is playing a role in which no previous Trump-era figure has survived.

One other person has been in the spot Fauci now occupies. That is, of course, James Mattis, the retired four-star Marine Corps general and former secretary of defense for Trump. Former is the key word here, and the question is whether the change in circumstances between Mattis’s time and Fauci’s—the public nature of this emergency, the greater proximity of upcoming elections, the apparent verdict from financial markets and both international and domestic leaders that Donald Trump is in deep over his head—will give Fauci the greater leverage he needs, not just to stay at work but also to steer policy away from the abyss.

Why is Anthony Fauci now, even more than James Mattis before him, in a different position from any other publicly visible associate of Trump’s?
Pre-Trump credibility, connections, and respect. Fauci has been head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, at the National Institutes of Health, since Ronald Reagan’s first term, in 1984. (How can he have held the post so long? Although nothing in his look or bearing would suggest it, Fauci is older than either Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden. He recently turned 79.)

Through his long tenure at NIH, which spanned the early days of the HIV/AIDS devastation and later experience with the SARS and H1N1 epidemics, Fauci has become a very familiar “public face of science,” explaining at congressional hearings and in TV and radio interviews how Americans should think about the latest threat. He has managed to stay apart from any era’s partisan-political death struggles. He has received a raft of scientific and civic honors, from the Lasker Award for health leadership, to the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded by George W. Bush.

Thus, in contrast to virtually all the other figures with whom Trump has surrounded himself, Fauci is by any objective standard the best person for the job — and is universally seen as such. This distinguishes him from people Trump has favored in his own coterie, from longtime consigliere Michael Cohen to longtime ally Roger Stone to longtime personal physician Harold Bornstein; and from past and present members of his White House staff, like the departed Michael Flynn and the returned Hope Hicks and the sempiternal Jared Kushner; and fish-out-of-water Cabinet appointees, like (to pick one) the neurosurgeon Ben Carson as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

Put another way: Very plainly, Trump needs Fauci more than Fauci needs Trump. This is not a position Donald Trump has ever felt comfortable in— witness the denouement with Mattis.

The ability not to abase himself before Trump. The first Cabinet meeting Donald Trump held, nearly three years ago, was unlike any other conducted in U.S. history, and very much like subsequent public appearance of Trump in company with his appointees.

In that meeting, on June 12, 2017, as TV cameras were rolling, Trump went around the table and one-by-one had his appointees gush about how kind, wise, and far-sighted he was—failing only to compliment him on his humility. (Tina Nguyen described the meeting at the time in Vanity Fair.) After praising himself, Trump called on others to praise him, starting with the reliable Mike Pence. “It is the greatest privilege of my life to serve as the vice president to a president who is keeping his word to the American people,” Pence began. All the others followed his example—with the prominent exception of Mattis. He spent his “praise” time instead complimenting the men and women in uniform he led.

No public event like that Cabinet meeting had happened before in the United States, simply because no other president has been as needy for in-public adulation as Trump is. Of course most politicians and all presidents are needy; you could not run for the presidency if you had a normal temperament. (Background reading on this point, while you’re “socially isolating”: Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men.) Every political leader eats up the praise in private—“Wonderful job today, Mr. President—you were really connecting!”, not to mention Veep—but all the rest of them have been savvy enough to know how tacky this looks in public. The modern exception-illustrating-the-rule might have been Lyndon Johnson, with enough of the Sun King in his makeup to enjoy having people humble themselves before him. But holding a public adulation-fest? If George W. Bush had heard, say, Karl Rove start in that way, he would likely have said, “OK, Turd Blossom, what are you angling for?” Barack Obama—or John F. Kennedy, or Jimmy Carter— would have arched an eyebrow as if to ask, “Hey, did you think you were still playing in the minors?”

But what we saw in that Cabinet meeting, we have seen again and again from those around Trump. The most humiliating recent examples come from the people in charge of the coronavirus response: Pence again; Alex Azar, head of Health and Human Services; Robert Redfield, head of the Centers for Disease Control; and Seema Verma, in charge of Medicare and Medicaid. The beginnings and endings of their public statements, and the answers to many questions, are larded with praise for Trump and his “decisive and visionary action.” (For the latest example, see Verma under questioning from Martha MacCallum of Fox News. Verma repeatedly dodges MacCallum’s direct question about whether hospitals have enough ventilators and other supplies (as Fred Barbash laid out in the Washington Post. MacCallum makes one last try—and Verma seeks refuge in saying, “And that’s why the president has taken such a bold and decisive action.” That claim made no logical sense to MacCallum or the listeners, but it reflected the inescapable logic of what is expected from members of the Court of Trump.)

There is one exception: Anthony Fauci. He has occasionally said that he agrees with aspects of the administration’s or the president’s policies, but he has avoided the ritual self-abnegation. Of course Fauci held his job long before Trump came to town, and is not part of the normal round of high-level appointments each new administration makes. (To the best of my knowledge, though, directors of NIH institutes, like Fauci, serve “at the pleasure of the president” and so could be removed. If I’m wrong on that, will update.)

But Fauci’s polite but consistent reluctance to grovel cannot have gone unnoticed by the audience-of-one for all the other appointees: Trump himself.

Daring to contradict Trump, in public. This is a step beyond anything Mattis attempted. Through the first two years of the administration, background-sourced stories and reports based on “those in a position to know the Secretary’s thinking” laid out the increasing distance between Mattis’s view of American interests and what Trump was saying and doing.

But there is no precedent, from Mattis or anyone else, for what we have seen these past few weeks from Fauci at the podium. Is the coronavirus problem just going to go away (as Trump had claimed)? No, from Fauci. It is serious, and it is going to get worse. Is the testing system “perfect” (as Trump had claimed)? No, it is not working as it should. Is the U.S. once again the greatest of all nations in its response to the threat? No, it is behind in crucial aspects, and has much to learn from others.

Fauci is saying all these things politely and respectfully. As an experienced Washington operator he knows that there is no reason to begin an answer with, “The president is wrong.” You just skip to the next sentence, “The reality is...” But his meaning—“the president is wrong”—is unmistakable.

Anthony Fauci has earned the presumption-of-credibility for his comments. Donald Trump has earned the presumption that he is lying or confused. A year ago that standoff—the realities, versus Trump-world obeisance—worked out against James Mattis. Will the balance of forces be different for Fauci? As of this writing, no one can know.

2020 Time Capsule #1: Four Ways Trump’s Oval Office Address Failed

Tom Brenner / Reuters March 12, 2020

Four years ago, when Donald Trump was on his rise—from apparent-joke candidate, to long-shot, to front-runner, to nominee, and on to electoral winner—I wrote in this space a series of “Trump Time Capsules.”

They started with #1, back in May, 2016, when a Paris-bound airliner plunged into the Mediterranean and Trump immediately declared that the cause must have been terrorism. “What just happened?” he shouted to a rally crowd before wreckage had even been found. “A plane got blown out of the sky. And if anybody thinks it wasn’t blown out of the sky, you’re 100 percent wrong, folks, OK? You’re 100 percent wrong.” (Naturally, French authorities later determined that the crash arose from a mechanical problem.)

They ended with installment #152, just before the election, at the time when James Comey’s last-minute reopening of the Hillary Clinton email case was dominating headlines. In between there were installments about Paul Manafort’s fishy-looking role, the “grab ‘em by...” moment, Trump’s comments about theMexican judge,” and the shift of one-time Trump ridiculers like Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell into a Vichy Republican coalition.

Through all the posts, the idea was to record in real time what people knew about Donald Trump, about the country, and about the issues and stakes in the election, before any of us knew how the contest was going to turn out. As I wrote in introducing the very first installment four years ago:

People will wonder about America in our time. It can be engrossing to look back on dramatic, high-stakes periods in which people were not yet sure where things would lead, to see how they assessed the odds before knowing the outcome. The last few months of the 1968 presidential campaign: would it be Humphrey, Nixon, or conceivably even George Wallace? Or 1964: was there a chance that Goldwater might win? The impeachment countdown for Richard Nixon, in 1974? The Bush-Gore recount watch in 2000?

The Trump campaign this year will probably join that list. The odds are still against his becoming president, but no one can be sure what the next five-plus months will bring. Thus for time-capsule purposes, and not with the idea that this would change a single voter’s mind, I kick off what I intend as a regular feature. Its purpose is to catalogue some of the things Donald Trump says and does that no real president would do.

We are again in a not yet sure moment.

- About the upcoming election.

- About the unfolding-by-the-minute consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.

- About the recent collapse of the stock markets, and the less immediately visible, but ultimately far more damaging, economic and social effects of the sudden simultaneous collapse of the travel and lodging industries, of the live-events and sports and conference and entertainment businesses, of restaurants and bars, of taxis and trains, of stores in college towns, and of the impact of all of this on the people who unload baggage from airliners or clean rooms for hotel guests or work as security guards at museums or sell jerseys at baseball games. Such roles are not as resonant as “steelworkers” or “coal miners” in political or journalistic discourse, but these jobs collectively form a very large part of the economy, they’re very hard to do over the internet or “remotely,” and they’re being eliminated at a pace not seen in at least a dozen years, and probably since the 1930s.

We don’t know.

So behind our veil of ignorance about outcomes, this is another chronicle of what we knew and heard day by day, which I’ll intend to operate, as with the original series, through the upcoming election season.

Obviously I am skipping through what would be several decades’ worth of news in normal circumstances: impeachment, the Democratic primaries, the evisceration of legal norms, and so on down a long list.

Instead, for an arbitrary starting point, let’s begin with Trump’s Oval Office address last night on the virus threat. I have experience with this rhetorical form: I wrote a number of such addresses long ago when Jimmy Carter was president, and I have studied dozens of them in the intervening years.

This latest Trump speech was uniquely incompetent and inappropriate, and it’s worth noting why, as American voters decide whether to retain him in office.

One audience that Trump himself takes seriously—the world financial system—obviously took a dim view of his statement, as markets around the world headed sharply downward practically as soon as he began to talk. Of course, their view indirectly affects everyone else.

But from a political, rhetorical, and civic perspective, what was wrong with the speech? While watching it, I was assessing the speech by two standards: What it showed about Trump and his styles of thought, and what it showed about presidents and their roles in similar moments of stress.

As for Trump himself, his public vocabulary is strikingly limited on a deployable-word-count basis: “Many people are saying,” “it’s the greatest ever,” “we have tremendous people,” “very good things are happening,” “there has never been anything like it,” and of course “sir.”

Equally striking is the consistency, or narrowness, of the messages Trump delivers. A huge proportion of his entire discourse can be boiled down to two themes:
I am so great, and am doing a better job than anyone else ever has. (Biggest crowds, best economy, most loyal supporters, etc.)
Other people are such cheaters—and it is outrageous what they are trying to get away with. (They’re sending rapists; they’re behind on their NATO payments; they’re ripping us off in trade; etc.)

I won’t go through the whole classification of his discourse into these two categories, but nearly everything he said last night could be boiled down to one or the other of those themes.

I am so great and am doing the best possible job. (“This is the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history … Our team is the best anywhere in the world … Because of the economic policies that we have put into place over the last three years, we have the greatest economy anywhere in the world, by far.”)
Other people are mistreating us and are to blame. (Repeated references to the “foreign virus,” banning entry from most foreign nationals who have recently been in Europe, etc.)

Of course, every presidential address in every era has implicitly argued, I am doing a good job. Whether the challenge they’re dealing with is the Great Depression or the 9/11 attacks, Pearl Harbor or the Cuban Missile Crisis, when describing the challenge and their intended response, all presidents are effectively saying: You can feel better about this emergency, because I have a plan.

But until Trump, other presidents have applied the “show, don’t tell” policy when it comes to their own competence. They want to show they are acting the way the country would hope, so they don’t have to say it.

Trump says it himself. He quotes other people saying it about him. And he insists on hearing about his greatness from his retinue—most recently in the fawning statements made by his own vice president and secretary of health and human services, who preface their updates about the virus with North Korean-style compliments for the leader’s far-sighted action.

Five years into Trump’s presence as a foreground political figure, many listeners are inured to the two unvarying notes in his presentations: that what is good has come from him, and what is bad has come from someone else. But the prominence of these two notes in an Oval Office address was a reminder of how much we have learned to overlook. This is not how presidents have ever talked before.

And what about the speech, just as a speech? In my view it had three problems: how it was conceived; how it was written; and how it was delivered. (Plus, a bonus fourth problem I’ll get to at the end.)

How it was conceived: An Oval Office address is by definition about a big problem. (Otherwise, why is a president imposing on our time this way?) And its purpose is to answer several explicit questions: Why did this happen? How bad is it? What are we going to do about it? It also, always, must answer a deeper, broader, and more important question: Will we be OK?

Abraham Lincoln’s First and Second Inaugural Addresses can be thought of as precursors to Oval Office addresses of the broadcast era, and as the ideal form of such speeches, answering all these questions. (Why did this happen? “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war…. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect, and defend’ it.” Will we be OK? “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in..”)

Again, that’s the ideal form, but it is one that other presidents have had in mind as the model to work toward. These addresses have been about us, the American family, not about me, the leader. But Trump has only the me note in his vocal and emotional range, except for them as the enemies. He used the word us in the speech, but it was just a word. Audiences swallow a lot of guff from politicians, entertainers, and other public figures. But over time, the public can size up its most familiar performers and recognize which words ring true to them, and which they’re just reading from a script.

And this is entirely apart from the speech’s failure to address the major elephant-in-the-room questions reporters, governors, and public health officials had been asking. Starting with, Why are we so far behind with tests?

How it was written: It was written badly.

How it was delivered: Donald Trump is very effective and entertaining as an unscripted live performer, riffing and feeding off the energy of a crowd. Why does he keep going to big rallies? Partly because the crowds adore him there, and partly because this is what he’s genuinely good at. His rallies—part greatest-hits, part “you have to be there to believe it!” surprises—are great shows. That’s how he commanded so much free airtime on cable TV through 2015 and early 2016: it was the latest must-watch reality show.

But you can’t do that in every speech. And while Trump can still slip a little bit of his rally-meister style into an hour-long State of the Union address, it’s just impossible in 10 minutes behind the Resolute desk. And thus he seemed robotic, even narcotized. Presumably he had seen the text before he encountered it on the TelePrompter—in normal circumstances, a president would have done practice run-throughs many times before the cameras came on. But to judge from his delivery, he was trying to parse his way through sentences he had never seen before. If this seems harsh, compare George W. Bush’s Oval Office address after the 9/11 attacks, or Ronald Reagan’s in 1986 on defense spending and arms-limitation talks.

Bonus: Within an hour of Trump’s speech, other parts of the government were issuing “clarifications” about points he had misstated in his speech. No, not all travel from Europe was suspended. No, the European transit ban did not apply to cargo. No, Americans coming back didn’t need to be screened before reentry. And no, on other points.

Had the need for immediate fact-checking arisen, with any previous Oval Office address? Not that I am aware of. Whatever political party holds the White House and whatever policies these speeches seek to advance, such addresses usually reflect the greatest level of attention to detail that a president’s team can apply. Unfortunately, it probably did so in this case, too.

Twelve hours after Trump’s speech, Joe Biden gave an address that was “presidential,” by the standards listed above. It expressed concern for those suffering in medical, financial, or emotional ways. It laid out what was known and unknown about the challenge. Implicitly, it argued: We will be OK.

What the contrast between the speeches means, politically or in terms of public health, we don’t know at this moment. As of this installment, we know that Donald Trump faced a familiar test of presidential mettle, and badly failed.