By Denny Gulino
WASHINGTON (MaceNews) – You can feel the rumble of distant war drums even before you can hear them, in the nation’s capital of all places, as the Trump administration faces a renewed wave of criticism – just as it might, finally, be least deserved.
“Might” could be a leap, because there is obviously a lot to be criticized. Politico has rolled out a story of how many thousands of tons of food that could be feeding the new armies of the hungry were and are being wasted because the Agriculture Department can’t unwind red tape fast enough.
Even the continuation of the daily Corona Virus Task Force briefings was in doubt until the Sunday night White House schedule was published, showing the one set for Monday at 5 p.m. ET. Now the kind of close analysis used to detect any changes in the Politburo hierarchy will be focused on who shows up.
Least likely, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. The long knives were being unsheathed weeks ago but the whispered rumors – otherwise known as headlines – lately were that Azar had overpromised and underperformed every step of the way in early virus time.
Then he placed a trusted lieutenant in charge of virus affairs whose previous experience was breeding labradoodles. The past week’s killing blow was his supposed lie to the vice president that renowned government scientist Rick Bright was being promoted.
Instead, Bright’s pending whistleblower complaint and public statements to the effect he was removed from his post at something known as BARDA exploded into the news, blindsiding the White House specialists in information enhancement – the spin doctors.
The reflex denial, from President Trump, that reports of an imminent firing were, of course, “fake news” is almost taken as confirmation these days. If anything can save Azar it will be an inclination to spite what the president hopes will be believed is an inherently anti-Trump press.
That Bright was involuntarily transferred out of the HHS Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority because, he claimed, he wasn’t an enthusiast for hydroxychloroquine, resurrected a subject that even the president doesn’t bring up much any more. That’s for well-reported reasons involving the FDA, the W.H.O. and every other reputable medical authority.
What about the NIH’s Tony Fauci? He’s still to be seen everywhere, including on Saturday Night Live – OK, that was Brad Pitt – but everywhere else, including comic Jim Gaffigan’s transcendant virus sketch on CBS Sunday Morning.
Everywhere, that is, with the possible exception of the Corona Virus Task Force briefings. Any connection with the president’s statement he does not agree with Fauci about the state of virus testing, or the extent to which the virus will be back in the fall?
Incidentally, Gaffigan’s CBS piece is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePkJgy9aeXE.
Enough laughing. Back to the serious stuff. Will Task Force and State Department AIDS ambassador Deborah Birx be on hand? As observed before, she is enough of a diplomatic pro to let any kind of embarrassment roll off, even having the cameras showing her stiff response correcting what she said were the president’s “musings” about ultraviolet light and disinfectant. Enough said.
However, if you listened closely to her appearances on TV Sunday, she did briefly concede something remarkable on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that did not quite comport with the favored White House narrative.
In responding to the obligatory questions about why there is still comparatively insufficient virus testing in the United States, she added something else to the rote defense of testing materials supply and distribution, commercial and government testing capabilities, methodologies and the ubiquity of testing centers.
“The intent is to continue to scale with the support of states,” she said of ordinary testing, “but at the same time we have to realize that we have to have a breakthrough innovation in testing, we have to be able to detect antigen rather than constantly trying to detect the actual live virus or the viral particles itself and to really move into antigen testing.”
“Antigen” testing is not to be confused with the antibody testing that is beginning to be done in some cities, or the diagnostic or PCR/RNA testing that has been the subject of most discussion of the topic and which Dr. Fauci has said is ramping up toward the minimum necessary 3 million instances a week.
“I know corporations and diagnostics are working on that now,” she continued. “We have to have a breakthrough. This RNA testing will carry us certainly through the spring and summer but we need to have a huge technology breakthrough and we’re working on that at the same time.”
Antigen testing, therefore, is the quick and easy test for the corona virus that is necessary to do the mass evaluation of virus spread needed to get to America’s new mitigation normal, of businesses and work sites and schools open without carrying the risk of triggering a second wave or third wave.
The UK thinks it already has that antigen test and it is being used for all medical personnel. In the United States, as fast as the PCR/RNA testing is advancing, with all those swabs and reagents and viral transport medium that goes with it, plus the proprietary testing methodologies matched to available testing processors, it won’t suffice after all even if it reaches the Task Force’s goals.
That’s something President Trump has not shared at his briefings in which he repeats the PCR/RNA testing “is going very well.”
The fact is, it seems, testing in any form is not yet at the level to justify the limited business reopenings under way. And the kind of testing that is getting all the emphasis now is not the final answer to testing shortcomings.
That’s despite all the reassurances from the president and vice president. Testing is to remain the major weak link in the chain of circumstance that leads to justifiable reopenings nationwide. We’ll be hearing so much more on that theme in the weeks ahead.
What will be heard from the president himself? As he said in that Saturday tweet, “What is the purpose of having White House News Conferences when the Lamestream Media asks nothing but hostile questions, & then refuses to report the truth or facts accurately.” He gives the media “record ratings, & the American people get nothing but Fake News. Not worth the time & effort!”
So no news conference Saturday or Sunday. That said, few would bet his briefing appearances will end any time soon. If he was expecting some pushback from Republican lawmakers imploring him to continue, there was instead those stories that GOP senators want him to indeed cut back those long, rambling sessions. They often devolve into arguments with reporters, new accusations against some Democratic governors and more arguments with reporters.
The net aftertaste, some Republican senators are reported to feel, is often the opposite of what’s intended, not the feeling any new important information has been imparted, or of any well reasoned insights or condolences shared by a knowledgeable leadership figure – as in New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s daily briefings. No, what’s left out there night after night is the lasting image of a snarling and defensive president who wants nothing more than to settle some more scores.
One more reference to Gaffigan here. He said Sunday he voraciously absorbs every scrap of virus news, even from the BBC. But not necessarily the president’s news conferences. “I’m not a masochist,” he said.
Will the president shorten his news conferences, which often last more than an hour and a half and can bring very little from the Corona Virus Task Force itself? The Washington Post said that in the 13 hours Trump spent at the microphone in three weeks, two hours and 45 minutes were spent on self-congratulation.
Since that tweet Saturday again pointing out the shortcomings of the “lamestream” media there have been 38 other tweets and retweets from the president, several attacking the news media including another aimed at a Fox News anchor and a video mocking Joe Biden.
Perhaps he was referring to his prodigious off-hours output of tweets when he posted Sunday, “The people that know me and know the history of our Country say that I am the hardest working President in history.” He added, “I am a hard worker and have probably gotten more done in the first 3 1/2 years than any President in history. The Fake News hates it!”
As said at the beginning, anyone who watches the tenor of the restive “fake news” folks can feel a rumbling of the jungle drums of redoubled criticism. As noted here previously, the president’s attempt to claim “sarcasm” instead of acknowledging with a touch of humor a disinfectant faux pas seemed to be the point at which the most ardent critics smelled blood.
And as noted in the beginning, the renewed Fourth Estate attacks might be coming just be at the point where the criticism is least deserved.
Let’s dismiss for the moment the president’s extravagant and oft repeated claims of success after success, of a virus testing regime he asserts is close to adequate to the challenge, of his vindictive campaign against most media and his gratuitous insults directed at opponents of any stripe. Dismissing all that, what’s left?
Some real authentic progress. Some states may be ignoring his three-phase guidelines for reopening and virus deaths seem sure to go well above the minimum projected toll of 67,600. They are already passing 55,000.
Yet there are many signs that most governors are taking the guidelines seriously. Most Americans, according to several surveys, are not about to abandon their social distancing, their masks and their faith in a rescue from science someday. The surveys show that only a small fraction of Americans endorse the Wisconsin-type mass protests.
Medical personnel, risking their lives to serve, are viewed as authentic heroes, as they should be. There is a new appreciation for first responders and many others who keep the wheels turning, from grocery clerks to even major corporations, from pharmaceutical firms to auto plants making ventilators and masks.
Whether this benefits the president’s approval ratings or not, the impressive scope of the American response is happening, and under his watch. It’s all far from perfect and, in fact, the rest of the world has few examples of perfect response efforts to offer either. At the very least, perhaps some of President Trump’s critics can acknowledge, it could all be even worse.
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Contact this reporter: denny@macenews.com
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