Trump Labels Himself ‘a Wartime President’ Combating Coronavirus
"Now it's our time. We must sacrifice together, because we are all in this together, and we will come through together," the president said.
By CAITLIN OPRYSKO and SUSANNAH LUTHI
Politico
03/18/2020 06:10 PM EDT
President Donald Trump on Wednesday began to invoke the rhetoric of “a wartime president” as he told reporters he views himself as one, while his administration fights to contain the spread of coronavirus and mitigate the economic fallout from the global pandemic.
“I do, I actually do, I'm looking at it that way,” Trump told reporters during a press briefing at the White House when asked whether he considered the U.S. to be on a wartime footing. “I look at it, I view it as, in a sense, a wartime president. I mean, that's what we're fighting.“
Trump has repeatedly referred to U.S. attempts to battle the virus — which has sickened thousands across the U.S. and killed more than 100 — as a “war” against an “invisible enemy.” But during Wednesday’s briefing he went the furthest yet in adopting the rhetoric of a commander in chief during wartime.
At the top of his remarks, the president pointed to the havoc the virus has begun to wreak on the economy, telling reporters in the White House briefing room that the pandemic would require a response unseen since World War II.
“Every generation of Americans has been called to make shared sacrifices for the good of the nation,” he told reporters, offering examples like teenagers volunteering to fight in the war and workers sleeping on factory floors.
“To this day, nobody has ever seen like it, what they were able to do during World War II,” he continued. “Now it's our time. We must sacrifice together, because we are all in this together, and we will come through together. It's the invisible enemy. That's always the toughest enemy, the invisible enemy.”
"It's a very tough situation here. You have to do things,” he explained later. “You have to close parts of an economy that six weeks ago were the best they've ever been. And then one day you have to close it down in order to defeat this enemy ... but we're doing it and we're doing it well.”
The comments coincided with a number of announcements from the president on an expanded coronavirus response across the federal government centered on a mobilization of military resources at the Pentagon as the outbreak worsens. The number of confirmed cases has exploded in recent weeks, with deaths topping 100 for the first time on Tuesday night and one Washington county alone reporting 10 new deaths Wednesday afternoon.
Trump for the first time said he would invoke the Defense Production Act, and announced the deployment of military hospital ships to virus hotspots, though he later wrote in a tweet that he had only done so “should we need to invoke it in a worst case scenario in the future.“
Additionally, Trump declared that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was now “fully engaged at the highest levels” and operating in every region of the country, though he didn’t elaborate. He also announced that his housing department would temporarily suspend evictions and foreclosures.
The unfamiliar rhetoric from Trump came as Congress is speeding to put a second multibillion-dollar emergency aid package on his desk this week before immediately turning to a third package to prop up industries that have been gutted by the outbreak.
Trump also announced a slew of other measures aimed at blunting the spread of the virus, including that his administration is looking into self-administered coronavirus tests in an effort to dramatically expand access to tests for the fast-spreading disease.
Trump told reporters that his administration is working with “several groups” to determine whether a “self-swab” is as accurate as the tests health providers are currently performing.
He added he's pushing for speedy FDA approval of the self-swab test that people can do themselves. He didn’t elaborate on the timeline of getting the diagnostic to market, or who’s producing it.
“It would free up a lot,” Trump argued. The new process, he said, would be a “much easier process than the current process that's not very nice to do — I can tell you, because I did it. But we have a current process that's a little bit difficult, if you haven't done.”
Trump announced last weekend that the White House physician had tested him for coronavirus late Friday evening. Late Saturday his top spokesperson, Stephanie Grisham, issued a memo saying the president did not have the virus.
On Wednesday, Trump also said that he would invoke the Defense Production Act, which would significantly increase the production of critical equipment including hospital beds and other medical supplies by allowing the administration to direct U.S. industry to ramp up production of critical medical supplies.
Officials have repeatedly warned of a shortage of ventilators and respirators to treat patients who have tested positive for coronavirus, as well as masks for health care providers.
Administration officials couldn’t clarify how many ventilators are currently available around the country for critically sick COVID-19 patients, and Trump conceded the system was caught off-guard with the shortfall in ventilator supply — calling the situation a “very unforeseen thing.”
“We have tremendous numbers of ventilators but there's never been an instance like this, where no matter what you have it’s not enough,” Trump said.
Vice President Mike Pence said the government had more than 10,000 ventilators stockpiled to deploy out to hospitals, roughly echoing an estimate from over the weekend from the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who had put the number at just under 13,000.
The Defense Department pledged on Tuesday to send HHS about 2,000 ventilators to add to its stock — but as growing numbers of hospital report shortages, it’s unclear whether supply can keep up with mounting critical cases.
Several local and state leaders had been pleading with Trump for several days to deploy military resources to assist in fighting the disease, including asking the Army Corps of Engineers to quickly erect hospitals to house coronavirus patients.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper said during Wednesday’s briefing that the Army Corps was in New York — which has become the biggest hot spot on the East Coast — meeting with leaders there, while Trump announced that the Pentagon was deploying two military hospital ships: one there and another to an undetermined location on the West Coast.
Esper added that he’d put a number of field and expeditionary hospitals on notice for deployment at Trump’s request.
In addition, Trump said that the Department of Housing and Urban development, in an attempt to provide “immediate relief” for homeowners and renters, would be suspending foreclosures and evictions through the end of April.
Amid the mad scramble and confusion over shortages in protective gear for front-line hospital workers, the Center on Medicare and Medicaid Services is recommending conservation as of Wednesday.
In another attempt to avoid overcrowding in hospitals, Pence and CMS Administrator Seema Verma urged hospitals to delay elective procedures “across the country in our healthcare system to ensure that medical supplies and medical capacity go where they are needed most.”
Verma urged a widespread limit on elective medical visits and surgeries — like dental visits — where clinicians need masks, but announced that more detailed rules would come later in the day, although they won’t be mandatory as some local officials have threatened.
“We believe that these recommendations will help surgeons, patients and hospitals prioritize what is essential, while leaving the ultimate decision and the heads of state and local health officials and those clinicians who have direct responsibility to their patients,” she said. “And we urge providers and clinicians and patients to seriously consider these recommendations. They will not only preserve equipment, but it also allows doctors and nurses to help those that are on the front lines. And it'll protect patients from unnecessary exposure to the virus.”
Front-line doctors and nurses are worried specifically about the dwindling supplies of respirator masks, which they need for intubating a critically sick COVID-19 patient to protect themselves against infection. But clinicians treating infectious diseases burn through protective gear quickly, and some doctors have already begun to get sick themselves.
The Defense Department is offering five million masks, but only one million of these are available right away.
Trump acknowledged the pressing need, as hospitals continue reporting that they’re days away from running out of their supplies.
“We have targets for masks, the numbers of masks are incredible,” he said. “We've ordered millions of them. But we need millions more. A thing like this has never been requested, and we've never had to even think in terms of these numbers. But we need millions of masks and all that will be ordered.”
Nearly one-third of nursing homes, whose residents are among those most at risk of dying from the virus, don’t have these masks on hand, nor are they used to supplying them.
Also at Wednesday’s briefing, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, Dr. Deborah Birx, sounded a new alarm about data that show young people as well as old are getting seriously ill from COVID-19, flagging concerns based on reports from Italy and France that show some cases of young people in critical hospital care.
“It may have been that the millennial generation — our largest generation, our future generation that will carry us through for the next multiple decades — there may be disproportional numbers of infections among that group,” she said.
Birx also sent out an urgent call for young people to stay home if their offices or schools have shuttered, and to conscientiously avoid social gatherings.
“We can't have these large gatherings that constantly do occur throughout the country for people who are off work, to then be socializing in large groups and spreading the virus,” she said.
Photos from earlier in the week showed thousands of people flocking to Florida beaches, where the pandemic didn’t appear to stall spring break activities even as the rest of the country was shutting down. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis responded Tuesday by ordering a crack-down on beach crowds and warned that beachgoers would have to adhere to the CDC guidelines of social distancing.
Despite looking to project a sense of control over the pandemic on Wednesday, Trump rejected challenges to his credibility and a lack of confidence in his handling of the outbreak.
When one reporter pointed to an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll from the day before that found 60 percent of Americans putting “not very much” or no trust in Trump to handle the crisis, the president pointed to his overall approval rating among Republicans, which has remained high. He then pivoted to a brief attack on former Vice President Joe Biden, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination.
Trump also flatly denied that he’d seen an internal report from the Department of Health and Human Services predicting that the outbreak could stretch as much as 18 months, and sparred with reporters over his recent references to the virus as the “Chinese virus.”
Meanwhile, stock markets dove during the White House briefing.
Just before the coronavirus task force wrapped up its briefing, the S&P 500 index hit the 7 percent decline needed to trigger a mandatory 15-minute break under SEC rules — the fourth such triggering of the so-called circuit breaker in two weeks.
By CAITLIN OPRYSKO and SUSANNAH LUTHI
Politico
03/18/2020 06:10 PM EDT
President Donald Trump on Wednesday began to invoke the rhetoric of “a wartime president” as he told reporters he views himself as one, while his administration fights to contain the spread of coronavirus and mitigate the economic fallout from the global pandemic.
“I do, I actually do, I'm looking at it that way,” Trump told reporters during a press briefing at the White House when asked whether he considered the U.S. to be on a wartime footing. “I look at it, I view it as, in a sense, a wartime president. I mean, that's what we're fighting.“
Trump has repeatedly referred to U.S. attempts to battle the virus — which has sickened thousands across the U.S. and killed more than 100 — as a “war” against an “invisible enemy.” But during Wednesday’s briefing he went the furthest yet in adopting the rhetoric of a commander in chief during wartime.
At the top of his remarks, the president pointed to the havoc the virus has begun to wreak on the economy, telling reporters in the White House briefing room that the pandemic would require a response unseen since World War II.
“Every generation of Americans has been called to make shared sacrifices for the good of the nation,” he told reporters, offering examples like teenagers volunteering to fight in the war and workers sleeping on factory floors.
“To this day, nobody has ever seen like it, what they were able to do during World War II,” he continued. “Now it's our time. We must sacrifice together, because we are all in this together, and we will come through together. It's the invisible enemy. That's always the toughest enemy, the invisible enemy.”
"It's a very tough situation here. You have to do things,” he explained later. “You have to close parts of an economy that six weeks ago were the best they've ever been. And then one day you have to close it down in order to defeat this enemy ... but we're doing it and we're doing it well.”
The comments coincided with a number of announcements from the president on an expanded coronavirus response across the federal government centered on a mobilization of military resources at the Pentagon as the outbreak worsens. The number of confirmed cases has exploded in recent weeks, with deaths topping 100 for the first time on Tuesday night and one Washington county alone reporting 10 new deaths Wednesday afternoon.
Trump for the first time said he would invoke the Defense Production Act, and announced the deployment of military hospital ships to virus hotspots, though he later wrote in a tweet that he had only done so “should we need to invoke it in a worst case scenario in the future.“
Additionally, Trump declared that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was now “fully engaged at the highest levels” and operating in every region of the country, though he didn’t elaborate. He also announced that his housing department would temporarily suspend evictions and foreclosures.
The unfamiliar rhetoric from Trump came as Congress is speeding to put a second multibillion-dollar emergency aid package on his desk this week before immediately turning to a third package to prop up industries that have been gutted by the outbreak.
Trump also announced a slew of other measures aimed at blunting the spread of the virus, including that his administration is looking into self-administered coronavirus tests in an effort to dramatically expand access to tests for the fast-spreading disease.
Trump told reporters that his administration is working with “several groups” to determine whether a “self-swab” is as accurate as the tests health providers are currently performing.
He added he's pushing for speedy FDA approval of the self-swab test that people can do themselves. He didn’t elaborate on the timeline of getting the diagnostic to market, or who’s producing it.
“It would free up a lot,” Trump argued. The new process, he said, would be a “much easier process than the current process that's not very nice to do — I can tell you, because I did it. But we have a current process that's a little bit difficult, if you haven't done.”
Trump announced last weekend that the White House physician had tested him for coronavirus late Friday evening. Late Saturday his top spokesperson, Stephanie Grisham, issued a memo saying the president did not have the virus.
On Wednesday, Trump also said that he would invoke the Defense Production Act, which would significantly increase the production of critical equipment including hospital beds and other medical supplies by allowing the administration to direct U.S. industry to ramp up production of critical medical supplies.
Officials have repeatedly warned of a shortage of ventilators and respirators to treat patients who have tested positive for coronavirus, as well as masks for health care providers.
Administration officials couldn’t clarify how many ventilators are currently available around the country for critically sick COVID-19 patients, and Trump conceded the system was caught off-guard with the shortfall in ventilator supply — calling the situation a “very unforeseen thing.”
“We have tremendous numbers of ventilators but there's never been an instance like this, where no matter what you have it’s not enough,” Trump said.
Vice President Mike Pence said the government had more than 10,000 ventilators stockpiled to deploy out to hospitals, roughly echoing an estimate from over the weekend from the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who had put the number at just under 13,000.
The Defense Department pledged on Tuesday to send HHS about 2,000 ventilators to add to its stock — but as growing numbers of hospital report shortages, it’s unclear whether supply can keep up with mounting critical cases.
Several local and state leaders had been pleading with Trump for several days to deploy military resources to assist in fighting the disease, including asking the Army Corps of Engineers to quickly erect hospitals to house coronavirus patients.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper said during Wednesday’s briefing that the Army Corps was in New York — which has become the biggest hot spot on the East Coast — meeting with leaders there, while Trump announced that the Pentagon was deploying two military hospital ships: one there and another to an undetermined location on the West Coast.
Esper added that he’d put a number of field and expeditionary hospitals on notice for deployment at Trump’s request.
In addition, Trump said that the Department of Housing and Urban development, in an attempt to provide “immediate relief” for homeowners and renters, would be suspending foreclosures and evictions through the end of April.
Amid the mad scramble and confusion over shortages in protective gear for front-line hospital workers, the Center on Medicare and Medicaid Services is recommending conservation as of Wednesday.
In another attempt to avoid overcrowding in hospitals, Pence and CMS Administrator Seema Verma urged hospitals to delay elective procedures “across the country in our healthcare system to ensure that medical supplies and medical capacity go where they are needed most.”
Verma urged a widespread limit on elective medical visits and surgeries — like dental visits — where clinicians need masks, but announced that more detailed rules would come later in the day, although they won’t be mandatory as some local officials have threatened.
“We believe that these recommendations will help surgeons, patients and hospitals prioritize what is essential, while leaving the ultimate decision and the heads of state and local health officials and those clinicians who have direct responsibility to their patients,” she said. “And we urge providers and clinicians and patients to seriously consider these recommendations. They will not only preserve equipment, but it also allows doctors and nurses to help those that are on the front lines. And it'll protect patients from unnecessary exposure to the virus.”
Front-line doctors and nurses are worried specifically about the dwindling supplies of respirator masks, which they need for intubating a critically sick COVID-19 patient to protect themselves against infection. But clinicians treating infectious diseases burn through protective gear quickly, and some doctors have already begun to get sick themselves.
The Defense Department is offering five million masks, but only one million of these are available right away.
Trump acknowledged the pressing need, as hospitals continue reporting that they’re days away from running out of their supplies.
“We have targets for masks, the numbers of masks are incredible,” he said. “We've ordered millions of them. But we need millions more. A thing like this has never been requested, and we've never had to even think in terms of these numbers. But we need millions of masks and all that will be ordered.”
Nearly one-third of nursing homes, whose residents are among those most at risk of dying from the virus, don’t have these masks on hand, nor are they used to supplying them.
Also at Wednesday’s briefing, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, Dr. Deborah Birx, sounded a new alarm about data that show young people as well as old are getting seriously ill from COVID-19, flagging concerns based on reports from Italy and France that show some cases of young people in critical hospital care.
“It may have been that the millennial generation — our largest generation, our future generation that will carry us through for the next multiple decades — there may be disproportional numbers of infections among that group,” she said.
Birx also sent out an urgent call for young people to stay home if their offices or schools have shuttered, and to conscientiously avoid social gatherings.
“We can't have these large gatherings that constantly do occur throughout the country for people who are off work, to then be socializing in large groups and spreading the virus,” she said.
Photos from earlier in the week showed thousands of people flocking to Florida beaches, where the pandemic didn’t appear to stall spring break activities even as the rest of the country was shutting down. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis responded Tuesday by ordering a crack-down on beach crowds and warned that beachgoers would have to adhere to the CDC guidelines of social distancing.
Despite looking to project a sense of control over the pandemic on Wednesday, Trump rejected challenges to his credibility and a lack of confidence in his handling of the outbreak.
When one reporter pointed to an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll from the day before that found 60 percent of Americans putting “not very much” or no trust in Trump to handle the crisis, the president pointed to his overall approval rating among Republicans, which has remained high. He then pivoted to a brief attack on former Vice President Joe Biden, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination.
Trump also flatly denied that he’d seen an internal report from the Department of Health and Human Services predicting that the outbreak could stretch as much as 18 months, and sparred with reporters over his recent references to the virus as the “Chinese virus.”
Meanwhile, stock markets dove during the White House briefing.
Just before the coronavirus task force wrapped up its briefing, the S&P 500 index hit the 7 percent decline needed to trigger a mandatory 15-minute break under SEC rules — the fourth such triggering of the so-called circuit breaker in two weeks.
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