Im-Politic: Selective CCP Virus Finger-Pointing

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Barack Obama, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, Dan Diamond, Daniel Lippman, Defense Production Act, DPA, George W. Bush, health security, healthcare goods, Im-Politic, Jessica Silverman-Greenberg, Mainstream Media, MSM, Nahal Toosi, National Security Council, Nicholas Kulish, pandemic, regulations, Sarah Kliff, The New York Times, Trump, ventilators, Wuhan virus

Mainstream Media accounts of the Trump administration’s CCP Virus response keep appearing emphasizing how lousy and lackadaisical it’s been compared with the federal response to potentially dangerous disease outbreaks during the Obama years – and especially given supposedly prescient pandemic warnings that the Obama-nauts sounded to their successors that allegedly were ignored.

So RealityChek is going to have to keep pointing out major flaws in these accounts that both reporters and their editors should have noted, and questions they should have asked.

Keep in mind, moreover, that today’s pushback comes on top of (1) this blog’s description of a 2011 Commerce Department report on America’s increasingly dangerous vulnerability to foreign cutoffs of vital healthcare goods that was completely ignored; and (2) a similar presentation of federal economic data making clear the nation’s healthcare security – another way to think of this vulnerability – has been weakening for at least two decades.

Let’s start with the article in today’s New York Times detailing how a George W. Bush administration plan continued under Barack Obama failed to plug what its public health officials viewed as “one of the medical system’s crucial vulnerabilities: a shortage of ventilators.” The effort entailed finding businesses willing to try to build ventilators that were cheaper, more portable, and easier to use than were then available, and then awarding the contract to the best proposal.

According to Times reporters Nicholas Kulish, Sarah Kliff, and Jessica Silver-Greenberg (and presumably their editors), the eventual failure mainly highlighted “the perils of outsourcing projects with critical public-health implications to private companies; their focus on maximizing profits is not always consistent with the government’s goal of preparing for a future crisis.”

And although this point wasn’t made, the obvious message that the piece meant to send readers is that the President continues making a big mistake by not unleashing the full power of the Defense Production Act (DPA)– which creates vast government power to order whatever companies it wishes to make whatever products it considers necessary as quickly as possible, and to prioritize sales to Washington, not other customers. Underlying this position, of course, is the (completely ignorant) belief that this 1950 law (amended several times since) enables a Chief Executive to snap his fingers and instantly start assembly lines churning out ventilators and face masks and pharmaceuticals, etc.

But let’s leave aside this DPA fetishism. As I tweeted, the following sentence in the piece isn’t completely uninteresting given the unmistakable importance of quick results: After an initial failure (that shouldn’t be pinned on either of those two administrations), “The federal government started over with another company in 2014, whose ventilator was approved only last year and whose products have not yet been delivered.”

That doesn’t sound like the regulatory process reflected particular urgency – and clearly the problem extended into the Trump administration. But this business-as-usual attitude reigned even though, as the article noted, the ventilator project “came in the wake of a parade of near-miss pandemics: SARS, MERS, bird flu and swine flu.” In other words, evidence abounded that pandemics weren’t a rarity. Recently, they were becoming frequent. And still apparently no thought was given to any regulatory fast-tracking.

Finally in connection with this episode. It’s commendable that these pre-Trump public health officials tried to do something new. Less commendable, and less understandable, is why none of them recognized the foreign vulnerability problem and the offshoring-happy trade policies that fostered them.

Two other recent articles seeking to pin the blame for U.S. CCP Virus unpreparedness on Mr. Trump came out March 16 and March 25 in Politico. The first documented that on January 13, 2017 – seven days before the Trump inauguration – a team of outgoing Obama administration officials held a briefing for a team of incoming Trump-ers “intended to hammer home a new, terrifying reality facing the Trump administration, and the incoming president’s responsibility to protect Americans amid a crisis” – the distinct possibility that a major, deadly pandemic would sweep over the United States from abroad.

Further, the briefers specified that the new administration “could face specific challenges, such as shortages of ventilators, anti-viral drugs and other medical essentials, and that having a coordinated, unified national response was ‘paramount’….” Unfortunately, continued the article by Nahal Toosi, Daniel Lippman, and Dan Diamond, the Trumpers seemed pretty apathetic. And that’s pretty damning, right?

In principle, yes. But why did the Politico staff bury this observation: “None of the sources argued that one meeting three years ago could have dramatically altered events today”? Because it would take much of the punch out of this supposed bombshell?

Also buried: An observation in the apparently actual briefing document that, when in terms of “U.S. hospital preparedness and response,” “State and local governments lead public health response.” That’s an important piece of the current American response – even though it’s been relentlessly portrayed in the press another example of the administration’s failure. And P.S. – this document said nothing about ensuring adequate national screening capability.

Politico wasn’t finished, however. Nine days later, it ran another piece – by two of the same reporters – charging that the Trump administration’s CCP Virus policies have “failed to follow” a detailed pandemic playbook prepared by the Obama National Security Council that, it seems, would have prevented much of the virus damage inflicted on the nation.

Again, it’s a plausible claim – although, like the first Politico piece, this article left out the development of the Trump administration’s own pandemic strategy by the fall of 2018 (which means that work on it throughout the federal government began months before).

Also, like the first article, it failed to pose these crucial questions: If the Obama pandemic specialists were so utterly convinced that a pandemic would strike sooner rather than later, and that Team Trump was falling down on the preparation job, why didn’t they alert Democrats in Congress, or Never Trumper Republicans? Certainly there’s been no shortage of lawmakers (especially Democrats) looking for any opportunity to slam the administration (especially if this activity could do some good).

Additionally, if these pandemic warriors did send their message to these lawmakers, why did the public hear so little about it?

My hunch: For three years, the Never Trumpers of both parties had much higher priorities. Think “Russia” and “impeachment.”

Im-Politic: The Latest Trump CCP Virus Fake News

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Beth Cameron, CCP Virus, CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, China, coronavirus, COVID 19, ebola, Im-Politic, National Security Council, NSC, Obama administration, pandemic, Politico, Tim Morrison, TIME, Trump, Washington Post, WHO, World Health Organization, Wuhan virus

I’m getting sick and tired of debunking Mainstream Media myths spread about the Trump administration’s failures in dealing with the CCP Virus (as I have now taken to calling it, in honor of the Chinese Communist Party regime’s role in covering it up and thereby preventing timely responses all over the world). And maybe you’re getting sick and tired of reading them.

All the same, the attacks keep coming, and three in particular that have appeared in the last week – which happen to be closely related to each other – are screaming out for pushback.

Off the bat, though, some essential context: As I’ve tweeted repeatedly, I agree that the President’s anti-Wuhan Virus (another monicker I’ve been using) policy has been flawed. Chiefly, Mr. Trump does deserve criticism for claiming until recently that everything’s under control – although I can’t help but continuing to note that the World Health Organization (WHO) didn’t declare the situation to be a global pandemic until March 11. That’s a grand total of nine days ago.

In addition, testing of course took off way too slowly. I strongly suspect that this stemmed from outmoded guidelines and manufacturing processes at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that predated the Trump inauguration. But the buck in the U.S. government ultimately and rightly stops on the President’s desk, and a Chief Executive who’s described himself as a Can-do-type disrupter should have stopped the agency’s business-as-usual approach faster.

As for the broadsides with much less, if any, merit? The first concerns the claim that the administration foolishly abolished the National Security Council (NSC) office that it inherited from the Obama administration that focused on protecting the country from pandemics. This allegation, first made by that office’s first director, has been (to put it charitably) exposed as misleading by one of her NSC successors, Tim Morrison.

He’s explained that the office’s responsibilities were merged into a new office that looked at pandemics more holistically, because they’re closely related to challenges like those posed by weapons of mass destruction generally. And Morrison has contended – credibly – that thanks to various preparations made by this reorganized NSC, an Ebola outbreak was quashed quickly.

To be sure, as I’ve pointed out, the emergence of diseases in regions like Central Africa, which have scant connections with the global economy, and in places like China, which have extensive connections, pose dramatically different challenges. And I continue to think, as argued, that bureaucratic reforms involving such tiny government agencies are game-changers in real-world terms. But you’d think that the initial accuser, Beth Cameron, might consider apologizing. And that the Washington Post would acknowledge a huge fact-checking failure (though it did run the rejoinder).

What’s even less well known – and has gone even more scantily reported than the Morrison observations – is that Mr. Trump’s predecessors approved decisions that actually do look like genuine pandemic defense downgrades. According to this TIME magazine post:

“The Trump Administration has become the third White House in a row to downgrade or eliminate the senior White House personnel tasked with tracking disease and bioterrorism threats, according to Kenneth Bernard, a retired Rear Admiral and physician, who served as a special assistant to the president for security and health during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.”

TIME continues:

Bernard “served in the top role in the Clinton National Security Council, only to be ignored by the incoming George W. Bush Administration, which eliminated his special advisor position.

“But after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington spurred fears Al-Qaeda would follow up with a bioweapons attack, and the anthrax attacks of 2001, the Bush Administration re-established the office, bringing Bernard back to serve as the first former Special Assistant to the President for Biodefense, as a subset of the White House’s Homeland Security Council (HSC), which later helped combat outbreaks of SARS and the Avian Influenza.”

And as for the Obama record:

“Under Obama’s NSC, Bernard says the office was downgraded again, until the 2014 Ebola crisis emerged, and President Barack Obama appointed ‘Ebola Czar’ Ron Klain. National Security Advisor Susan Rice later institutionalized the office in 2015, calling it the Directorate for Global Health and Security and Biodefense.”

Not exactly a model of foresight.

The next two myths were propagated (and weirdly invalidated at the same time) by this supposed Politico scoop about a transition-period Obama administration warning to the incoming Trump administration to ramp up for an inevitable big-time pandemic. The thrust of the article, written by Nahal Toosi, Daniel Lippman, and Dan Diamond, is that outgoing Obama officials held a briefing with soon-to-be Trump counterparts on the potential dangers of the kind of bio-threat being faced by the nation right now, and that the Trump-ers were decidedly uninterested.

The allegedly clear implication, as the article quoted former national security advisor Susan E. Rice as recently writing: “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.”

As noted above, the structures and budgets point is bogus. But so is the warnings point. And we know this in part because, as Politico stated (in paragraph 18), “None of the sources argued that one meeting three years ago could have dramatically altered events today.”

Also important to note: The authors presented documents presented at the meeting, and they make clear the phoniness of both the charge that Trump officials were (uniquely) caught flat-footed by CCP Virus testing requirements, and that the leadership vacuum they’ve created has given the states no choice but to fill a gap that’s not their responsibility.

Except the documents say absolutely nothing about boosting testing capabilities or modifying CDC guidelines. And they specify that “State and local governments lead public health response,” especially when it comes to “hospital preparedness and response.”

Recent news reports have created some optimism that effective anti-CCP Virus medicines may be developed sooner than initially expected.  Too bad there’s no reason to think that another serious malady – Trump Derangement Syndrome – will soon come under control.

Im-Politic: Flynn & Abe Reveal the Price of a Thinly Staffed Trump Administration

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Defense Department, Gary Cohn, Im-Politic, James Mattis, Japan, Michael Flynn, National Economic Council, National Security Council, Shinzo Abe, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, Trade, Trump

During the last presidential campaign, the Mainstream Media ran so many stories about the Trump campaign being in various stages of “disarray” at various times that some skepticism was in order when such articles resumed popping up following Mr. Trump’s presidential victory and inauguration. In addition, I kept asking myself why any official with any loyalty to Mr. Trump would even speak with mainstream reporters like The New York Times‘ Maggie Haberman, who was so hostile to their boss for so long that she was considered a “surrogate” by top aides to candidate Trump’s main general election rival, Hillary Clinton.

At the same time, as so often remarked, running for office is hardly the same as serving in office, especially when the presidency is involved. And the resignation of an official so high level as national security adviser Michael Flynn after only about three weeks into an administration is a glaring sign that the president is well behind the curve in getting his organizational act together. Unless he raises his game dramatically very soon, his thick teflon coating could start wearing very thin, and even at this early stage, “failed presidency” claims will look disturbingly on target.

But even if the transition to a post-Flynn presidency goes relatively smoothly, and no other fiascoes break out, this latest episode vividly reminds of a big challenge President Trump will keep facing throughout his time in office, and one that I’m not totally confident he’ll solve in a satisfactory way.

Why not? Because he’s never had a large cadre of high-quality advisers capable of staffing even the very top levels of a new administration. Nor is one is likely to appear any time soon. For nationalist critics of recent American trade, broader globalization, and foreign policies have never attracted anywhere near the kind of funding that’s needed to create the kind of counter-establishment that can nurture a big enough core of knowledgeable specialists representing that perspective.

In fact, the nationalists’ performance stands in stark and sad contrast to that of other interests in years past. The leading example is mainstream conservatism – which recognized the need for such institutions to overthrow or at least modify what they saw as a dangerously liberal policy consensus reigning in Washington and in national politics during the post-New Deal decades.

As a result, if Mr. Trump is to halt an powerful downward spiral in his presidency, he may well need to rely even more heavily than at present on cabinet and key sub-cabinet and other aides who hold much more conventional views than his – and those of his base – on key issues like trade and immigration that largely vaulted him into the Oval Office. Just look at the president’s recent summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for evidence of how this dilemma has already affected U.S. policy in ways that Trump backers can’t possibly support.

Precisely because Japan has been a leading predatory trading power for so long, its economy-wide trade barriers and other mercantile practices had drawn Mr. Trump’s ire during the campaign. In addition, Japan was (rightly) portrayed as a classic defense free-rider – a country that was able to skimp on its own military spending because of its guarantee of American protection. And candidate Trump went even further than most critics in questioning the bilateral security relationship, suggesting that because of the mounting nuclear threats from both China and North Korea, Washington’s decades-old promise to defend Japan against any and all attacks posed increasingly alarming nuclear risks to the United States.

Japan clearly was so worried about President Trump’s views that Abe rushed to the United States right after the November vote and became the first foreign leader to meet President-elect Trump in person. Abe’s trip last week, moreover, made him the second foreign leader to see President Trump in person once his term began. (Britain’s Theresa May was the first.)

Judging not only from the official record of the visit, but from the judgment of a group of Japan policy specialists that convened in Washington yesterday, Abe achieved both of his major objectives – and then some. President Trump pledged to continue the policy of defending Japan through thick and thin (“100 percent”), and Abe successfully deflected significant U.S. trade pressure – at least for the time being.

As made clear by Abe’s detailed and decisive statements during his visit, one main reason for his triumph was preparation – always an urgent necessity for Tokyo since, despite all the traditional American establishment boilerplate about interdependence, the United States has always been much more important to Japan than vice versa. But three other main reasons bring us back to the “Flynn problem.”

First, Abe plainly was able to fill a policy vacuum created both by the Trump administration’s growing pains and its thin staffing. Second, the American preparations made for the Abe meetings, including putting together briefing materials, were dominated by holdover bureaucrats who overwhelmingly support the longtime status quo in U.S.-Japan relations. And third, many of the top aides Trump has selected strongly support the status quo, too. These include Secretary of Defense James Mattis and National Economic Council Chair Gary Cohn. The former is general recently retired from an American military with a big vested psychological and bureaucratic stake in maintaining massive U.S. forward deployed forces in East Asia. The latter is a former senior executive at Wall Street mainstay Goldman Sachs.

Not that this kind of gloom and doom scenario (from a Trump-ian standpoint) is inevitable. Although high quality nationalist policy specialists are hardly abundant, they can be found. Moreover, it’s possible that President Trump could make clear to his more establishment-oriented advisers that he expects them to reflect his own iconoclastic leanings. In addition, aides that plainly represent his campaign positions (and of course contributed substantially to formulating them) could be given the whip hand bureaucratically, in order to drive this message home.

But of course this approach’s success will depend largely on the establishment figures following this lead – and not walking away from jobs that most of them plainly don’t need financially or or professionally. At the same time, even if Mr. Trump’s more conventionally minded advisers stay on in this atmosphere, would there be enough loyalists, and enough competent loyalists, to discipline them effectively? I don’t know if the aides most strongly supportive of the president’s vision, chiefly White House policy chief Stephen Miller, and chief strategist Steve Bannon, are grappling with these issues. I do know that they’ll need to if the Trump presidency is to achieve its promise.