BUT ...
January 13, 2017: Seven days before Trump was inaugurated, 30 top officials of the incoming administration participated in a detailed briefing with outgoing Obama officials about preparing for a "major domestic incident", including a global pandemic, and how best to respond and save American lives. Some of the Trump officials said, "This is really stupid and why do we need to be here." The briefing was not "the kind of thing that really interested [Trump] very much" and getting Trump "focused on something like this would be quite hard".
And so here we are.
Nahal Toosi, Daniel, Lippman, and Dan Diamond, Politico, March 16, 2020:
Seven days before Donald Trump took office, his aides faced a major test: the rapid, global spread of a dangerous virus in cities like London and Seoul, one serious enough that some countries were imposing travel bans.
In a sober briefing, Trump's incoming team learned that the disease was an emerging pandemic — a strain of novel influenza known as H9N2 — and that health systems were crashing in Asia, overwhelmed by the demand.
"Health officials warn that this could become the worst influenza pandemic since 1918," Trump's aides were told. Soon, they heard cases were popping up in California and Texas.
The briefing was intended to hammer home a new, terrifying reality facing the Trump administration, and the incoming president's responsibility to protect Americans amid a crisis. But unlike the coronavirus pandemic currently ravaging the globe, this 2017 crisis didn’t really happen — it was among a handful of scenarios presented to Trump's top aides as part of a legally required transition exercise with members of the outgoing administration of Barack Obama.
And in the words of several attendees, the atmosphere was "weird" at best, chilly at worst. ...
The outgoing Obama aides and incoming Trump aides gathered for roughly three hours on the afternoon of Friday, Jan. 13, 2017, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House. ...
At least 30 representatives of Trump’s team — many of them soon-to-be Cabinet members — were present, each sitting next to their closest Obama administration counterpart. ...
"Rather than heed the warnings, embrace the planning and preserve the structures and budgets that had been bequeathed to him, the president ignored the risk of a pandemic," [Susan] Rice [Obama's national security adviser] wrote. ...
Lisa Monaco, Obama's homeland security adviser, explained the thinking behind the January 2017 session in a recent essay for Foreign Affairs. ... "We included a pandemic scenario because I believed then, and I have warned since, that emerging infectious disease was likely to pose one of the gravest risks for the new administration." ...
Multiple current and former Trump officials reached by POLITICO said they did not recall much about the briefing. But some Obama aides who attended said they were left with the impression that many of the Trump aides showed up to simply check off a box more than to learn. ...
"The problem is that they came in very arrogant and convinced that they knew more than the outgoing administration — full swagger," one former Obama administration official who attended said.
"There were people who were there who said, 'This is really stupid and why do we need to be here,'" added another senior Obama administration official who attended, alleging that Ross and incoming Education Secretary Betsy DeVos were especially dismissive in conversations on the sidelines of the session. ...
Asked whether information about the pandemic exercise reached the president-elect, a former senior Trump administration official who attended the meeting couldn't say for sure but noted that it wasn't "the kind of thing that really interested the president very much."
"He was never interested in things that might happen. He's totally focused on the stock market, the economy and always bashing his predecessor and giving him no credit," the person said. "The possibility of things were things he didn't spend much time on or show much interest in. ... To get the president to be focused on something like this would be quite hard."
— Chris Lu (@ChrisLu44) March 16, 2020BREAKING: A week before Inauguration Day 2017, Trump team participated in a tabletop exercise with outgoing Obama team about preparing for a "major domestic incident"
One incident discussed was a pandemic. I participated in that exercise.
https://t.co/dsiauylaoe
BREAKING: A week before Inauguration Day 2017, Trump team participated in a tabletop exercise with outgoing Obama team about preparing for a "major domestic incident"
One incident discussed was a pandemic. I participated in that exercise.
There were 3 role-playing scenarios: hurricane, pandemic and cyber incident. Obama team discussed need to anticipate requirements, stay ahead of challenges and provide resources quickly
The goal was to acquaint Trump officials with how to coordinate around major incidents.
The pandemic role-playing scenario involved:
-"Novel influenza" with infections in Asia and Europe
-Efficient person-to-person transmission
-Insufficient lab capacities
-Travel bans
-Lag time before it comes to U.S.
-Need for vaccine
-Ventilator shortages
Sound familiar?
In event of a pandemic, Trump team was told:
-Pandemics can start in other countries and don't respect borders
-Science must guide decisions
-Federal/state collaboration is key
-Consistent messaging needed
-Social distancing recommended
-"Days - and even hours - can matter"
Thirty Trump officials attended the exercise (Cabinet and senior White House staff) https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/16/readout-principal-level-transition-exercise
But the vast majority of these officials are no longer in government
When you're dealing with a crisis like #COVID19, stable and experienced leadership matters.
Bottom line: when Trump says "we were all surprised" by #COVID19, he shouldn't have been.
The Obama team warned Trump's staff about a possible pandemic. Whether it was lack of preparation or staff turnover, the necessary work wasn't done to get in front of this.
Caitlin Oprysko, Politico, March 17, 2020:
At least 100 people in the United States have now died from coronavirus, according to an unofficial count compiled by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, and the disease has spread to all 50 states. ...
[T]here are now 5,894 confirmed cases of coronavirus, including presumed positives, reported in the country, and 105 reported deaths from the virus. West Virginia announced its first confirmed case on Tuesday, making it the 50th U.S. state to have confirmed cases. The database lists almost 200,000 confirmed cases globally. ...
The latest tallies are a far cry from when President Donald Trump predicted at a press conference in mid-February that the number of U.S. cases at the time — 15 — would drop to zero "within a couple of days."
1 comment:
Ron Nehring (RNC member 2007-11):
Just landed at LAX on a United flight from London. How did the screening go?
What screening? No one ever collected the form! No questions asked. No temperature taken. Nothing. All the way through in 32 minutes.
If this is “screening,” we’re all in trouble.
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