Trump has so far downplayed the coronavirus threat and accused Democrats and the news media of trying to hurt the stock market and his reelection chances.
“Because of all I’ve done, the risk to the American people remains very low,” he said in a Wednesday evening White House news conference about the coronavirus crisis he has spent weeks downplaying. “We’ve had tremendous success beyond what people would have thought.”in charge of the government’s coronavirus response, while denying Pence would serve as “czar” – a title he had mocked when Obama had used in his response to the Ebola outbreak in 2014.
Ronald Klain, a veteran of both the Bill Clinton and Obama White Houses, was that Ebola “czar,” tasked with coordinating the responses from the various executive branch agencies dealing with the outbreak. Both Klain and Obama ultimately won praise for their handling of the crisis, and Obama later institutionalized the structure Klain had established, creating, for example, a senior position on the National Security Council to respond to pandemics.
A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that while the NSC position had been eliminated, its duties had been absorbed into other positions on the council.
“The ball has been dropped,” Konyndyk said. “They’ve lost a month where they could have been doing that.” The briefing was nevertheless a dramatic shift from how Trump and his White House had been characterizing the virus since it became a global health threat two months ago.
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