A new, inside the room account of the chaotic day Trump addressed the nation on the pandemic.
www.politico.com
excerpt:
In late February 2020, the president and first lady were scheduled to travel to India. The president had tentatively agreed to the trip during a bilateral meeting, and it had been added to his calendar as a placeholder. But that was before a new, contagious disease called Covid-19 began spreading across the world. As the date grew near, most of the senior staff, and the first lady, started to have misgivings about the travel because of the virus. For whatever reason, Jared Kushner was insistent that we go, and as he was the “real” chief of staff, that carried weight. A final meeting was set in the Oval to determine whether the trip should move forward.
As other members of the senior staff and I were waiting to enter, Jared and Ivanka Trump blew past us and into the president’s private dining room to speak with him privately first — shocker. The start of the meeting actually coincided with the impeachment vote, so we all ended up watching that together before discussing the India trip. Although the Senate acquitted him, the president was in a sour mood, and made his thoughts clear to the room, saying, “I don’t really want to go. It is a long trip for not even two days, and we’re dealing with Covid. I’ll explain to [Indian Prime Minister Narendra] Modi that it isn’t a good time, and I will come later, in my second term.” Jared chimed in to remind the president that with all the visits he had already promised to undertake “in his second term” he would never be in the United States to do his job
No one in the Trump inner circle seemed to be taking the new virus too seriously at first. During a meeting with Modi in India, Trump mentioned the 34 people who were suffering from Covid-19 in quarantine on military ships. He complained that the news was affecting the stock market. “I wonder if this is overrated versus the flu,” he said. Of course, those 34 people would not be the only ones to contract the disease. As the number grew, Trump still seemed resistant to doing anything too drastic. Contrary to what he would say later, he didn’t immediately want to ban travel to China. And he asked officials in the White House if we were making “too big a deal out of this.”
In fact, I was impressed with Mnuchin for that very reason. He did not hesitate to make his views clear. He kept pushing back, over and over, against a roomful of people who supported closing the borders completely. After about an hour of going around in circles, the president told us all to go to the Cabinet Room and “figure out what to do.” I remember thinking to myself how ridiculous it was that the president of the United States had to tell his own staff to go figure this out and then come back to him.