The Washington Post - 18.03.2020

A18 eZ M2 THE WASHINGTON POST.WEDNESDAy, MARCH 18 , 2020

The coronavirus outbreak

The Coronavirus Show —
directed by, produced by and
featuring President Trump — has
certain rules.
The president, who is every
episode’s star, always gets the
best lines — delivering the happy
talk quotes and zingers that are
often riddled with half-truths
and misstatements, but that
allow him to present to the
audience the world as he wishes
it were, not as it is, in the middle
of a deadly global pandemic.
He reserves the right to
surprise viewers — as he did with
a serious turn on Monday
afternoon — offering an
appearance totally out of
character with the show’s
previous installments.
And the president appears
when he wants, often at the
beginning of coronavirus task
force news conferences, and
sometimes departs early, too —
not dissimilar to his time as the
actual reality TV host of NBC’s
“The Apprentice,” when he
would dole out the challenge and
then recede off-screen to the let
the teams battle for his approval.
This is generally when the real
show begins. But this show, too,
has its own set of rules.
Administration officials
playing supporting characters
must often shape-shift to inhabit
two main roles: the role of
Trump cheerleader, where they
make sure to lavish praise on the
president almost to the point of
obsequiousness, and the role of
competent government
bureaucrats doing their very best
to be honest and transparent
with the public.
It is not an easy casting
assignment.
And the average viewer — an
uneasy-to-terrified American,
social distancing at home and
looking for updates from their
government — could be forgiven
for thinking the entire federal
bureaucracy is simply ad-libbing
its way through what
increasingly feels like an almost
biblical crisis.
But there is, in fact, a loose
script, and just about everyone —
from the president and the vice
president, to the various agency
heads and task force members —
is following it, in near-daily
installments.
On Sunday, for instance,
Trump offered his self-
congratulatory, not-always-
entirely-accurate take on crisis in
an early evening news
conference. He began with the
Federal Reserve’s decision, just
moments before, to slash interest
rates down to zero.

“It makes me very happy, and I want to congratulate the Federal Reserve,” Trump said, before heaping praise on himself. “A nd you will not hear anything bad about me unless it’s about a month or two from now,” the president continued. “So I congratulate the Federal Reserve. I think it’s terrific.” Trump also offered some assertions of dubious provenance, leaving it to Anthony S. Fauci — who has emerged as this season’s breakout star, as the Cheerfully Stoic Truthteller — to offer a more nuanced version of reality. “I think, very important, the young people and people of good health, and groups of people, just are not strongly affected,” Trump said during his Sunday news conference. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaking just hours earlier on CNN’s “State of the Union,” had issued a stern warning that even young people in relatively good health “are not immune or safe from getting seriously ill.” “The virus isn’t a mathematical formula,” Fauci said. “There are going to be people who are young who are going to wind up getting seriously ill. So, protect yourself.” Trump also struck a tone of cautious optimism during the same Sunday news conference, when he explained, “This is a very contagious virus. It’s incredible. But it’s something that we have tremendous control over.” Again, it fell to Fauci — entering stage right to the briefing room podium at the 26- minute mark — to deliver the grimmer reality. “As I’ve said many times, and I’ll repeat it: The worst is, yes, ahead for us,” he said. “It is how we respond to that challenge that’s going to determine what the ultimate endpoint is going to be.” Before the truth-telling can begin, administration officials also take pains to praise the president, crediting nearly all good news to what they claim is Trump’s swift decision-making and strong leadership. Vice President Pence — a study in Oval Office subservience — is particularly gifted at this aspect of the job. During a news conference

Pandemic response has

become a reality show —

and everyone has a role

White House Debrief

ASHLEY PARKER

Saturday, Pence extolled Trump’s “unprecedented and extraordinary” decision to suspend travel from China as helping to halt the virus’s spread, and gushed that “the president took every step to prevent the coronavirus from coming into our country.” On Sunday, the vice president continued the praise-a-thon, touting Trump’s “decisive leadership,” and concluding, “So the American people can be confident that President Trump is going to continue to act without hesitation on the advice of our health-care professionals to put the health and safety of the American people first.” Surgeon General Jerome M. Adams similarly understood the performative rituals required by Trump, going so far in that same Saturday news conference as to offer the media “some straight talk from the nation’s doctor.” “No more bickering, no more partisanship, no more criticism or finger pointing,” Adams said. “There’ll be plenty of time for that.” He admonished the briefing room press corps for chronicling daily the various missteps and fumbles by the administration on combating the virus, offering his own prescription: “Less stories looking at what happened in the past.” Leon Panetta, who has served as White House chief of staff, defense secretary and CIA

director for past Democratic presidents, said the mixed messaging is confounding. “It’s almost as if the vice president and all the others can’t just talk about the facts and the truth of what’s happening,” Panetta said. “They’ve got to paint it in these broad brushstrokes that say whatever good is happening is the result of the president’s leadership and whatever bad is happening is somebody else’s fault.” Other officials have also played to type, emerging as various supporting characters. Deborah Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator — with her colorful silky scarfs, shimmering metallic tunic and smart updos — has channeled the government’s collective maternal instinct, offering calm snippets of wisdom. During a Monday afternoon news conference, she praised the media for its responsible social distancing — “Great spacing!” she said — and revealed herself to be the mother of “two wonderful millennial young women who are bright and hard- working” and urged the entire millennial demographic to do its part in stemming the spread of the virus. “They are the core group that will stop this virus,” Birx said. “They’re the group that communicates successfully, independent of picking up a

phone. They intuitively know how to contact each other without being in large social gatherings.” Fauci, too, continued his role as dispenser of candor Monday, gently warning that behavior that may feel like an overreaction is, in fact, appropriate and even prudent. “When you’re dealing with an emerging infectious diseases outbreak, you are always behind where you think you are if you think that today reflects where you really are,” he said. D ana Calvo, a screenwriter based in Los Angeles, said that at least as a television masterpiece, the Coronavirus Show still felt lacking. “What has struck me these past few days is the lack of stirring leadership moments that can bring an audience to its feet,” Calvo said in an email. “Trump continues to confirm he is incompetent and emotionally unavailable. It’s not exactly an Emmy-worthy moment when he tells a reporter, ‘I don’t take responsibility at all.’ ” The president himself seemed to sense something similar, and during Monday’s news conference offered up a plot twist: Trump largely presented from the podium as calm and measured, echoing the guidance of his public health experts and repeatedly conveying the severity of the situation. He advised against gatherings

of more than 10 people, urged people to work from home and exhorted the public to avoid discretionary travel, as well as going out to bars and restaurants. Trump even spoke of telling one of his own sons that “it’s bad, it’s bad.” And he offered his most dramatic assessment so far of the virus’s scope, saying it could last until July or August, if not longer. Several times, he played down any focus on the plummeting stock market — previously a key concern of his — and returned instead to solving the public health crisis at hand. “We’re not thinking in terms of recession, we’re thinking in terms of the virus,” Trump said at one point. For the duration of Monday’s news conference, Trump exhibited a classic character arc, seeming to have internalized the lessons his advisers have long been trying to impart — that his own behavior and public comments were making the problem worse — and offering an evolved public posture. There was but one major regression, when the president was asked by a reporter to assess his response to the virus on a scale of 1 to 10. “I’d rate it a 10,” Trump said. [email protected]

Philip rucker contributed to this report.

JAbIn boTsford/THe WAsHIngTon PosT Flanked by the coronavirus task force, President Trump speaks at a press briefing on Tuesday. Administration officials dealing with the pandemic must inhabit two main roles amid the daily drama: Trump cheerleader and competent government bureaucrat.

BY ROBERT COSTA

Over the weekend, Rep. Devin
Nunes (R-Calif.), a leading ally of
President Trump, dismissed con-
cerns about the coronavirus pan-
demic and said on Fox News that
“it’s a great time to just go out, go
to a local restaurant.”
And former New York City po-
lice commissioner Bernard Kerik,
a Trump supporter whom the
president pardoned last month,
tweeted that “this hysteria is be-
ing created to destabilize the
country, and destroy” Trump.
But from Italy, where there is a
national quarantine to try to slow
the devastating effects of the cor-
onavirus, Newt Gingrich offered a
different perspective. The former
House speaker wrote an opinion
piece seeking to convince his fel-
low Republicans that not only
was the pandemic very real, it
required urgent action.
Inside the Republican Party
and the conservative movement
that Trump commands, there is
now a deep divide as the nation
confronts the novel coronavirus.
For weeks, many on the right,
including Trump, minimized the
virus, if they considered it at all.
Even in recent days, as much of
the world shuts down to try to
stop its spread, some Republicans
mocked what they said was a
media-generated frenzy.
Their reaction reflected how
the American right has evolved
under Trump, moving from a bloc
of small-government advocates to
a grievance coalition highly skep-
tical of government, science, the
news and federal warnings.
Their conspiratorial unrest is
particularly acute within right-
wing media, where Fox Business
removed a prime-time anchor for

casting the coronavirus as “another attempt to impeach the president.” Other right-wing per- sonalities continue to call the coronavirus a “hoax” or falsely blame George Soros, the billion- aire investor and liberal donor, for causing it. But conservatives and Republi- cans now face an undeniable reality as the pandemic’s death count here and abroad climbs — a nd the worldwide reach of the coronavirus defies the bounds of political debate. “It’s damn clear that this is no hoax and should be taken seriously,” said Jason Miller, a former Trump campaign adviser who co- hosts a podcast with former White House chief strategist Ste- phen K. Bannon called “War Room: Pandemic,” w hich has doc- umented the economic and health fallout of the coronavirus for weeks. “The right underestimated this and thought the media was beat- ing up on Trump again,” added GOP strategist Ed Rollins, who chairs a pro-Trump super PAC. “That was yesterday. Today is, ‘Life in America is changing before our eyes.’ ” Trump has suddenly and mark- edly recalibrated his own ap- proach, after weeks of blasé comments about the virus that spurred some of his allies to dis- miss the danger of the pandemic. When asked Monday about Nunes’s comment to Fox News, Trump did not echo him. Instead, the president said he had not heard about the remarks but would “disagree” with anyone calling on Americans to gather at restaurants. “I think it’s p robably better that you don’t,” Trump told reporters.

Hours later, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said, “I’m pleased that the president and the public health officials seem to now be on the same page. I think there was a gap in the early days.” A turning point for Trump came last week when Fox News host Tucker Carlson, whom the president regularly calls, said in his opening monologue: “This is real.” “People you trust — people you probably voted for — have spent weeks minimizing what is clearly a very serious problem,” Carlson said. His riff caught Trump’s atten- tion and was one of the factors that led the president to start to reconsider his position, accord- ing to two White House officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter frankly. “The conservative media echo- sphere was playing to the president’s worst tendencies, but you can almost time his turnaround publicly to how Breitbart and Tucker Carlson have been cover- ing coronavirus,” said Sam Nun- berg, who advised Trump on media in the run-up to his 2016 campaign. Several top Republicans, including Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, have faced backlash for breaking with public health experts and shrugging off the call for social distancing, offering dis- cordant messages to Americans who are looking to the government for clarity and guidance. Dark conspiracy theories have also made their way into the fore- front of conservative discussions about the pandemic. David A. C larke Jr., former Mil- waukee County sheriff and a

Trump booster, suggested on Sun- day that the global panic about the coronavirus was being pushed by Soros — a common subject of anti-Semitic conspiracy t heories — a nd urged people to take to the streets. “Not ONE media outlet has asked about George Soros’s in- volvement in this FLU panic,” Clarke said. “He is SOMEWHERE involved in this.” Twitter took down those tweets on Monday, citing its policy against “encouraging self-harm.” Breitbart, a website once led by Bannon, has blanketed its pages in recent days with coronavirus coverage. “War Room: Pandemic,” b road- casting out of Bannon’s h ome, has become another gathering place for conservatives who see the crisis as a defining test for the nation and for Trump. Several Republican governors have contrasted with the politi- cally charged response in Wash- ington as they have dealt first- hand with the coronavirus and its impact. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has been a pacesetter, moving rapidly to close schools and some businesses, as has Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, among others. The virus has affected some of Trump’s biggest supporters. Days after Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) wore an enormous gas mask during a House floor vote on an emergency funding package for the coronavirus response, the congressman announced that he would self-quarantine for 14 days after encountering someone at the Conservative Political Action Conference who tested positive. Other Republican lawmakers who attended that conference, such as Rep. Paul A. G osar (Ariz.),

Sen. Te d Cruz (Tex.) and Rep. Douglas A. Collins (Ga.), announced they would self-quarantine even though they weren’t experiencing symptoms. Sen. To m Cotton (R-Ark.), meanwhile, has joined a right- wing clamor that has largely blamed China for unleashing “this plague on the entire world through their dishonesty and their lack of transparency and corruption.” His efforts come as other conservatives push to de- fine the virus as “Chinese” rather than solely in medical terms, even as Americans with Chinese heri- tage face xenophobia and grow- ing challenges. “We’re shutting down our country because of the cold virus, which is what coronaviruses are,” Rush Limbaugh told his national radio audience last week. “You think the Chinese are not laugh- ing themselves silly over how easy this has been?” He later added, “The Chi-Coms run this scam on some sort of virus, and the Ameri- cans do this?” During this year’s State of the Union address, Trump awarded Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom “in recognition of all that you have done for our nation, the millions of people a day that you speak to and that you inspire.” Historian Douglas Brinkley said Trump fueled Limbaugh and others with his early response to the coronavirus, which included sweeping travel restrictions on China, as well as political shots at his critics. “He lit up the conservative movement, which followed his lead,” Brinkley said. “They knew what to do when he intimated it might be a hoax — and they have seen him belittle institutions of

government for years, from the CIA to the State Department to the FBI. That has had a corrosive effect on the country.” Brinkley added that fierce partisanship, loyalty to Trump and a conservative media complex that is inclined to play up turbulence around Trump as unfair or “fake” has left the nation divided and on edge. An NBC News-Wall Street Jour- nal poll released Sunday showed Republicans are far less likely to be worried about the coronavirus, with 40 percent sensing “the worst is yet to come,” compared with 79 percent of Democrats. And 81 percent of Republicans approved of Trump’s efforts compared with 13 percent of Demo- crats. Gingrich said in a phone inter- view from Rome — where his wife, Callista, is the U.S. ambassa- dor to the Holy See — that many conservatives initially were prone to be dubious about the threat of the coronavirus because of “classic conservative distrust of big government” and “the bias and hostility they see in news coverage about the president that makes them assume that it’s one more lie.” But, Gingrich said, those as- sumptions have started to fall away as headlines about the pandemic grip the nation. “Facts matter,” Gingrich said. “It took a little longer for people to believe it, but they watched what happened in Italy and saw that it was not unique to China. That cut through and became real.” [email protected]

Kim bellware and Philip bump contributed to this report.

Some in GOP remain skeptical of illness’s reach and o∞cial reaction

The Washington Post - 18.03.2020

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