White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows made an unusually candid admission on Sunday — that US President Donald Trump’s administration does not intend to contain the COVID-19 crisis.
“We’re not going to control the pandemic,” Meadows said in a contentious interview with CNN’s State of the Union.
The former congressman from North Carolina made the revealing remark as confirmed cases of COVID-19 reached new peaks and hospitalizations rose rapidly in 38 states. The contagion also continues to ravage the White House, with US Vice President Mike Pence’s Chief of Staff Marc Short and four others in his inner circle having tested positive.
Photo: Reuters
Meadows repeatedly sidestepped questions about the administration’s responsibility for combating the spread of the virus. Instead, he highlighted what he called “mitigating” factors, including the search for a vaccine and new therapeutics that could bring down the death rate.
Even so, the number of deaths in the US is back up at about 1,000 a day.
Asked why the administration was not going to control the pandemic, Meadows replied: “Because it is a contagious virus.”
Despite Pence being exposed to the disease, he planned to continue an aggressive campaign schedule in the final nine days of the race.
Pence spoke at a rally in Kinston, North Carolina, on Sunday, where he did not address the positive cases in his entourage. He was to be in Hibbing, Minnesota, yesterday before returning today to campaign in North Carolina.
Such unbroken travel plans amounted to a breach of the recommendations of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which would require the vice president to be in quarantine for 14 days and always to wear a mask around other people. Pence has frequently been seen maskless in public.
Such blatant disregard for the administration’s own health standards is doubly awkward given that Pence has led the White House coronavirus taskforce since late February.
US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, the most senior public health expert on the taskforce, on Friday said that meetings had dwindled and Trump had not attended one in months.
The White House said Pence was not required to follow the quarantine rule because he is deemed “essential personnel.”
Asked why electioneering was classed “essential,” Meadows said Pence continued to do his official work in between campaign stops.
Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease expert at George Mason University in Virginia, called Pence’s decision to travel “grossly negligent.”
“It’s just an insult to everybody who has been working in public health and public health response,” she said.
Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who contracted the virus earlier this month after helping Trump with debate prep, was also critical.
Speaking to ABC’s This Week, he said: “I think everybody has to put the health of the people they are going to be in touch with first. I’m a little bit surprised.”
Trump left the White House on Sunday for a rally in New Hampshire. He was photographed not wearing a mask.
The latest data from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland puts the total number of confirmed cases in the US at more than 8.6m, with more than 225,000 deaths.
Hotspots have been identified in 36 states.
The count of new cases reached all-time highs on Friday and Saturday, with more than 83,000 recorded each day. Authoritative forecasters predict the US may see more than 300,000 deaths by the end of the year.
Yet Trump continues to insist falsely that the crisis is past its worst.
At a rally in Florida on Friday, he said: “We are entering the final turn and approaching the light at the end of the tunnel.”
On Saturday in North Carolina, he mocked media coverage of the pandemic, telling supporters: “Turn on the television, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID. By the way, on November 4 you won’t hear about it anymore.”
Despite Trump’s desire to wish the crisis away, the dramatic surge in infections across huge swaths of the country days before the election is causing the president inevitable political damage.
On Sunday, a new poll from CBS News put former US vice president Joe Biden, his Democratic challenger, marginally ahead in Florida, and neck-and-neck in North Carolina and Georgia.
With his back against the wall, Trump has placing increasing hope in the rapid roll out of a vaccine, but Fauci warned that any vaccine was unlikely to reach most of the American people until the spring at the earliest.
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