Meadows: 'We’re not going to control the
pandemic'
Ed
Pilkington
White House
chief of staff Mark Meadows has just made one of the most revealing comments to
emerge from Trump’s inner circle about the president’s historic mishandling of
the coronavirus crisis. On a Sunday political talk show, Meadows admitted that
the federal government was not focusing on trying to control the pandemic.
“We’re not
going to control the pandemic,” he told Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the
Union. “We are going to control the fact that we get a vaccine, therapeutics
and other mitigation.”
Tapper
pressed Meadows to explain why the administration was not going to control
Covid-19, given the massive surge that is pummeling the Midwest and mountain
states. He replied: “Because it is a contagious virus.”
Meadows’
statement would be astonishing at any time during the pandemic. It gives an
unusually candid insight into the mindset of a White House that from the outset
has played down its role in marshalling a federal effort to bring the virus
under control.
The remark
was all the more astounding given it’s timing. Marc Short, chief of staff to
vice president Mike Pence, has just tested positive for coronavirus, as have
three other VP staff and an adviser.
Yet Pence
continues to travel the US, unmasked, holding campaign events, the White House
avoiding the recommendation to quarantine set out by the administration’s own
public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, by
calling the vice-president an “essential worker”.
Pence is in
charge of the White House coronavirus task force, which a key member, Anthony
Fauci, said on Friday has seen its meetings “diminish” while President Trump
has not attended in “several months”.
Around the
country, confirmed cases are on a steep upward curve, with Friday and Saturday
recording the highest levels since the pandemic began. Hospitalisations and
deaths have also begun to rise.
In a heated
exchange with Tapper, Meadows repeatedly sidestepped the administration’s
responsibility for this surge in numbers just nine days before the presidential
election. He kept on stressing the role of therapeutics and a future vaccine in
“mitigating” the number of deaths, while implying the federal government had no
responsibility for the rampant spread of the virus.
Tapper
asked why the vice-president continued to travel to campaign events without
wearing a mask, despite having been exposed via his closest staff. Meadows
tried to redirect the blame to China as the source of the virus, but Tapper
continued to challenge him.
“Would you
agree this is very serious, people need to take precautions?” Tapper asked.
“I agree it
is very serious, but we continue to test more and more so the cases will go
up,” Meadows replied.
In fact,
the number of new confirmed cases is rising significantly faster than the
quantity of testing.
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