Current, Former Officials Decry Trump’s No-Bad-News Atmosphere They Say Led To Bungled Response To Outbreak

The New York Times: Inside Trump Administration, Debate Raged Over What To Tell Public
After weeks of conflicting signals from the Trump administration about the coronavirus, the government’s top health officials decided late last month that when President Trump returned from a trip to India, they would tell him they had to be more blunt about the dangers of the outbreak. If he approved, they would level with the public. But Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, got a day ahead of the plan. (Shear, Fink and Weiland, 3/8)

Politico: Trump's Mismanagement Helped Fuel Coronavirus Crisis
For six weeks behind the scenes, and now increasingly in public, Trump has undermined his administration’s own efforts to fight the coronavirus outbreak — resisting attempts to plan for worst-case scenarios, overturning a public-health plan upon request from political allies and repeating only the warnings that he chose to hear. Members of Congress have grilled top officials like Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Centers for Disease Control Director Robert Redfield over the government’s biggest mistake: failing to secure enough testing to head off a coronavirus outbreak in the United States. But many current and former Trump administration officials say the true management failure was Trump’s. “It always ladders to the top,” said one person helping advise the administration’s response, who noted that Trump’s aides discouraged Azar from briefing the president about the coronavirus threat back in January. “Trump’s created an atmosphere where the judgment of his staff is that he shouldn’t need to know these things.” (Diamond, 3/7)

The Associated Press: Official: White House Didn't Want To Tell Seniors Not To Fly
The White House overruled health officials who wanted to recommend that elderly and physically fragile Americans be advised not to fly on commercial airlines because of the new coronavirus, a federal official told The Associated Press. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention submitted the plan as a way of trying to control the virus, but White House officials ordered the air travel recommendation be removed, said the official who had direct knowledge of the plan. Trump administration officials have since suggested certain people should consider not traveling, but have stopped short of the stronger guidance sought by the CDC. (3/7)

NBC News: Mixed White House Messaging On Coronavirus Sparks Internal Frustration
White House officials are growing increasingly frustrated at what they see as President Donald Trump's consistent bids to downplay the severity of the coronavirus outbreak, a tendency that has led to a clash in messaging with public health officials. Those mixed signals were on display Sunday as the top infectious disease doctor at the National Institutes of Health, Anthony Fauci, warned the elderly and medically vulnerable to avoid large crowds and long trips or cruises and Surgeon General Jerome Adams told the public to be prepared for more cases and deaths. (Pettypiece, Jackson and Alba, 3/8)

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Trump Defends Administration’s Coronavirus Approach In Atlanta Visit
President Donald Trump almost didn’t make the trip to Atlanta to address his administration’s response to the coronavirus. But when he arrived at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s main Atlanta campus, he didn’t seem to want to leave. After initially scrapping the trip, the president gave an extended press conference at a lab in the CDC facility where he boasted about the agency’s “fantastic work” and declared the nation ready for an outbreak that’s shocked the U.S. economy and tested its health care infrastructure. (Bluestein, 3/6)

The New York Times: For Trump, Coronavirus Proves To Be An Enemy He Can’t Tweet Away
Defending against criticism of his handling of the coronavirus, President Trump suggested the other day that he could hardly have been expected to be ready for such an unexpected crisis. “Who would have thought?” he asked during a visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the nerve center for the government’s response to the outbreak. “Who would have thought we would even be having the subject?” (Baker, 3/8)

Politico: In Crisis, Trump Team Sees A Chance To Achieve Long-Sought Goals
In the depths of the 2008 economic downturn, incoming White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel uttered one of those controversial but honest lines that shook Washington: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Now, facing another emerging crisis, the Trump White House appears to agree. President Donald Trump and his team are talking up the opportunity to finally achieve stricter border security, wider tax cuts and reduced reliance on Chinese manufacturing amid the spread of the coronavirus throughout the U.S. Some officials see it as a narrow opening to offset the political damage from the coronavirus outbreak and deliver — or at least, talk about — some of the president’s longstanding promises. (Cook, 3/9)

The Hill: Trump: 'Fake News Media Is Doing Everything Possible To Make Us Look Bad' On Coronavirus Response 
President Trump in an early morning tweet on Sunday accused the “Fake News Media” of attempting to “make us look bad” on the administration's coronavirus response. The president called the White House’s plan to combat the growing outbreak in the U.S. “perfectly coordinated and fine tuned.” “We moved VERY early to close borders to certain areas, which was a Godsend,” he tweeted. “V.P. is doing a great job. The Fake News Media is doing everything possible to make us look bad. Sad!” (Coleman, 3/8)