{"id":30416,"date":"2020-10-04T14:44:50","date_gmt":"2020-10-04T18:44:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=30416"},"modified":"2020-10-04T14:44:50","modified_gmt":"2020-10-04T18:44:50","slug":"heres-how-deep-state-is-colluding-with-the-msm-to-undermine-trumps-covid-response","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=30416","title":{"rendered":"Here’s how Deep State<\/i> is colluding with the MSM to undermine Trump’s Covid response."},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018It\u2019s Just F*ck-Up After F*ck-up\u2019<\/em> \u2014Trump\u2019s COVID Advisers at Their Breaking Point<\/h1>\n

<\/p>\n

WHAT A MESS!<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n

With the president infected, the group responsible for combating the virus remains a mess. At the center of the drama is one man: Dr. Scott Atlas.<\/h3>\n

Erin Banco, National Security Reporter
\nAsawin Suebsaeng, White House Reporter<\/p>\n

\"\"

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast\/AP<\/p><\/div>\n

The announcement that\u00a0President Donald Trump<\/a>, his wife, and a top White House aide\u00a0contracted coronavirus<\/a>\u00a0threatened, on Friday, to bring unprecedented levels of tumult to the federal government.<\/p>\n

But even as the president was\u00a0rushed to<\/a>\u00a0the hospital at Walter Reed, for what the White House said would be days of observation, rest and testing, officials inside the administration said they didn\u2019t\u00a0anticipate<\/a>\u00a0much of a shakeup in their approach to combating COVID. There would reportedly be\u00a0no official revised mask policy<\/a>, which remained encouraged but not required. The White House\u2019s COVID task force would not take on an enhanced role, after operating for months on fumes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s business as usual,\u201d as one White House official put it, even as the pandemic had come bursting through their front door.<\/p>\n

The approach may have seemed odd considering the stakes: the leader of the free world, silent and out of sight, helicoptered to a hospital to deal with a deadly virus. But, to a degree, it merely echoed the science-skeptical mindset that has gripped Trump and his team as it has approached a likely spike in COVID cases this fall. By Friday, even some of the president\u2019s top boosters were wondering if it was all insane.<\/p>\n

\u201cI support [the president\u2019s] re-election, I think he\u2019s done an amazing job, I think he\u2019s Ronald Reagan on steroids. But one thing I personally don\u2019t understand is why people don\u2019t wear masks. I don\u2019t understand it. Why don\u2019t they wear masks? The president should tell people to wear them!\u201d businessman\u00a0Shalabh \u201cShalli\u201d Kumar<\/a>, a Trump and GOP mega-donor and chair of the Republican Hindu Coalition, said on Friday afternoon. \u201cI hope [the infection] is very minor, and I hope that there\u2019s no negative impact on him or the first lady at all, or anybody else associated with them. I\u2019m very concerned about this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elsewhere in Trumpworld, there was anger and internal frustrations over how the virus in general and the president\u2019s infection in particular had been handled. Among White House staff and the re-election effort, some advisers were furious that Trump wasn\u2019t talked out of attending a high-roller\u00a0fundraiser at<\/a>\u00a0his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club on Thursday night, after the White House already learned of his exposure to the virus, two administration officials said. The senior official was also exasperated that the way the White House bungled the information rollout in the past couple days left the administration wide-open to allegations of yet another disastrous cover-up.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just fuck-up after fuck-up,\u201d said a senior administration official who works with the coronavirus task force. \u201cI don\u2019t have much more to add [beyond] that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The anger expressed in some corners of Trumpworld on Friday was similar to the frustrations those inside the administration have come to feel. For weeks the president\u2019s medical advisers have been increasingly on the outs. But in recent days officials have grown increasingly resigned to the idea that keeping the public informed about the threats the virus poses while maintaining favor with the president is an impossible task.<\/p>\n

In the hours leading up to the president\u2019s announcement of a new coronavirus testing initiative last week in the Rose Garden, officials at the\u00a0Centers for<\/a>\u00a0Disease Control<\/a>\u00a0were left in the dark about the initiative\u2019s actual details. Earlier in the day, Vice President Mike Pence and Adm. Brett Giroir, the administration’s coronavirus testing czar, had hosted a call with the nation\u2019s governors, during which they said that the federal government planned to send states batches of Abbot BinaxNOW point-of-care tests, free of charge, with the hope that they use them for the reopening of schools.<\/p>\n

But neither Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation\u2019s leading infectious disease expert, nor CDC Director Robert Redfield were on the call. And when Trump ultimately unveiled the initiative at the Rose Garden, neither Redfield, Fauci nor Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, appeared alongside him. (Birx has been traveling across the country to work with colleges to slow community spread). Instead, the president turned to Pence, Giroir and Scott Atlas, an adviser to Trump on COVID-19 issues, to promote the new testing plan.<\/p>\n

For those who continue to warn that the virus will infect and kill more Americans without serious attention paid toward stopping community spread, the frustrations have hit a boiling point.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe used to meet seven days a week. Then five days a week. We\u2019re now meeting one day a week and at most two times a week,\u201d Fauci said during an\u00a0interview<\/a>\u00a0with AIDS & LGBT rights activist Peter Staley last week. \u201cThe way things have evolved at the White House is that there has been a pivot away from the reliance on a daily type of a task force discussion\u2026 on policy making and policy implementation… more towards how are we going to get this country open again economically. There is another science person\u2014 Dr. Atlas\u2014 who is much more with the president than any of the other task force members particularly Debbie Birx who used to be in that position. This is a unique situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the heart of the matter is Trump\u2019s belief that his election hinges on convincing the public that the virus is not the threat his own science advisers say it is.<\/p>\n

The president and his team have traveled across the country, greeting voters and other supporters without masks. Some of those events have been inside\u2014including rallies\u2014while others were held outdoors. And during the presidential debate on Tuesday, Trump publicly questioned the analysis of his own coronavirus officials, saying he did not agree with a timetable that a coronavirus vaccine would not reach the American people until well into next year.<\/p>\n

But the current delta between Trump\u2019s political objectives and scientific reality is, sources say, even worse than it appears publicly.<\/p>\n

Over the last several weeks, officials within the CDC, including several working with the White House coronavirus task force, have grown increasingly frustrated with the president, who they say has sidelined the nation\u2019s top scientists and health representatives in an effort to control the narrative around the pandemic\u2019s spread. While most admit the CDC has made mistakes, including accidentally posting guidelines about COVID-19 aerosol transmission, officials say the president has pushed aside top health officials throughout the administration primarily because they have questioned his approach to responding to the virus.<\/p>\n

Central to the dysfunction, officials say, is Atlas, a Rasputin-like figure who has increasingly gotten hold of the president\u2019s ear.<\/p>\n

Several officials who interact with the neuroradiologist expressed frustration that President Trump had put his trust in an individual who has little experience working on infectious disease outbreaks. Increasingly, those frustrations are bubbling to the surface in ways that would have been unheard of in past administrations.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s doing things that you would do if you wanted to tear apart the task force,\u201d one senior Trump administration official, who works closely with the group, said of Atlas. \u201cThe president was already doing a fine job ignoring much of the counsel coming out of the task force, but [Atlas\u2019s ascension] has made it even worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

This official referenced several times this summer, during which the United States had seen coronavirus surges in various areas, when Trump was being briefed on virus data or worsening situations, and would reply, \u201cWhat does Scott have to say,\u201d or \u201cWhat does Scott think?\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump had told senior officials in recent weeks he doesn\u2019t see Atlas on TV enough and wants him booked on more programs and cable-news shows representing the administration\u2019s policies, said a source with direct knowledge of the president\u2019s wishes. But even Fox News\u2014whose airwaves initially drew Trump to Atlas\u2014has grown wary of putting him\u00a0on some programs<\/a>, owing to his policy prescriptions that are deemed by many to be out-of-touch with mainstream scientific and public-health opinion.<\/p>\n

And within the administration, trust in Atlas is even lower. In the interview with Stanley, Fauci called out Atlas for undermining an\u00a0assessment<\/a>\u00a0by Redfield that 90 percent of Americans are still susceptible to the virus.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it was extraordinary inappropriate for him [Atlas] in a press conference like that to contradict the director of CDC as opposed to saying \u2018you know, it is a complicated issue and I think I\u2019d like to sit down and discuss this with the people from the CDC\u2019,\u201d Fauci said. \u201cAnd then what has happened, he\u2019s a smart guy, no doubt about it, but he tends to cherry-pick data.\u201d<\/p>\n

Redfield has also been quoted speaking critically about Atlas, saying\u2014in comments overheard\u00a0by NBC<\/a>\u00a0last week, that \u201ceverything\u201d Atlas \u201csays is false.\u201d Multiple officials working with the task force, meanwhile, have said that Atlas, the president and other advisers have downplayed case numbers and complicated their efforts to inform the public about how local communities can stop the spread of the virus by issuing public health ordinates, such as mask mandates, and by recommending stricter lockdown measures.<\/p>\n

On Friday, hours before Trump was flown to Walter Reed, Atlas was quoted as predicting the president would make \u201ca complete and full and rapid recovery.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was, he insisted, \u201czero reason to panic.\u201d<\/p>\n

___
\nhttps:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/its-just-fck-up-after-fck-uptrumps-covid-advisers-at-their-breaking-point<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018It\u2019s Just F*ck-Up After F*ck-up\u2019 \u2014Trump\u2019s COVID Advisers at Their Breaking Point<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30416\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}