Inside the White House during '15 Days to Slow the Spread'
An eerie quiet crept over the White House.
Desks have been empty. Office lights have been turned off. Many staffers had been advised to earn a living from home. The bustling Navy Mess was closed, and the standard stream of tourists dashing out and in of the West Wing had slowed to a trickle. Left behind have been President Donald Trump, his prime aides, and a small group of staffers, hunkered down and making battle plans as the coronavirus marched across the country. Every individual was acutely aware that their selections in the coming days might define their legacy — to not point out whether or not they stored their jobs after 2020.
It was the beginning of the 15-day interval during which the White Home hoped it might sluggish the advancing virus and stem the economic bleeding left in its wake. For the subsequent two weeks, the president’s coronavirus activity pressure inspired People to primarily self-isolate, whereas aides labored with anxious governors throughout the country and quarreling lawmakers negotiating over the largest economic restoration invoice the nation has ever seen.
Each day generated new challenges and controversies. The president oversold deals with corporations to make medical gear. He trumpeted potential cures that have been nonetheless unproven. Aides fielded incessant questions about medical provide shortages. Everybody grappled with a rising dying toll.
This account of the last two weeks contained in the White House is based mostly on over half a dozen interviews during that period with staffers and out of doors advisers, in addition to prior POLITICO reporting. Collectively, staffers described a time of uncertainty and reassessment as the West Wing reoriented itself totally round a singular mission. They witnessed historic moments from the middle of energy — the biggest one-day plunge ever in for the Dow Jones Industrial Common; followed by its biggest one-day achieve since 1933. They questioned what it would all imply for the election — would there even be in-person voting in eight months? Is campaigning as we know it over?
Meanwhile, People all over the place grappled with their altering realities: Will the best way we rejoice, congregate and pray change eternally? Will we turn out to be a extra remoted society, related by video conferences moderately than in-person gatherings?
“Ought to I even be here?” a White Home official stated squeamishly after a number of high-level staffers have been uncovered to the virus and forced to stay residence.
On Tuesday, the White House’s “15 Days to Sluggish the Unfold” initiative will come to an finish. The nation will look to Trump to inform individuals how for much longer every day life might be paralyzed, how a lot longer they’ll be out of a job.
What he will say, although, continues to be unknown.
THE BEGINNING: JANUARY 2U.S. instances: zero
U.S. deaths: zero
Stock Market: 28,868.80
As with many People, the magnitude of the state of affairs didn’t initially set in on the White House.
As early as Jan. 2, the Robert Redfield, head of the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, contacted the Nationwide Safety Council to debate a creating state of affairs in China relating to a respiratory sickness that they had yet to verify as a novel coronavirus, based on a White Home timeline reviewed by POLITICO. Ten days later, China reported its first demise from the virus.
Then, like a dry brush hearth, it spread.
The primary coronavirus case in the U.S. was confirmed on Jan. 21. Days later, the president developed a process pressure to deal with the potential unfold. But publicly, the president and his advisers maintained that the state of affairs was underneath management, as the president minimize off most travel from China at the beginning of February.
Internally, some White Home officers monitoring the state of affairs abroad felt annoyed the virus was being shrugged off by senior officials, together with the president. Decreasing travel from China was not sufficient, they argued. They pressed for Trump to take extra aggressive motion, citing forecasts that indicated the United States might face a trajectory of instances mirroring locations like Italy, which saw a sudden spike in mid-February.
Trump got here around in late February during an 18-hour journey again from India, the place he had spent two days amid cheering throngs, miles away from coronavirus considerations. On the flight, he noticed the round the clock media protection of the disease. In line with his appearing chief of employees Mick Mulvaney, Trump didn’t sleep on the complete experience again.
Minutes after landing on the morning of Feb. 26 in Washington, D.C., Trump tweeted that he can be holding a briefing to deal with the state of affairs. He rapidly tapped Vice President Mike Pence to oversee the coronavirus activity drive and predicted that the number of coronavirus instances in the U.S. would soon be “close to zero.”
The other occurred.
In early March, the president and his group acknowledged the writing on the wall, besieged by considerations from allies across the country. There were now over 1,000 instances in the U.S. The World Health Organization declared a pandemic. The stock market plummeted, even halting trading for 15 minutes on March 9 to keep away from a market-crashing slide.
Trump and his group scrambled to deal with the nation’s considerations in an Oval Office handle — solely the second one Trump had ever made.
“If tonight isn’t Trump saying, ‘That is dangerous and will get very worse, you have to take every precaution vital,’ then he can kiss a second time period goodbye,” an administration official stated at the time.
He didn’t say that. As an alternative, the president, in swiftly arranged remarks, stated he was barring all journey from Europe and promised that well being insurers had agreed to cover all coronavirus remedies. Buyers panicked — would needed cargo nonetheless be allowed to return into the U.S.? Insurers have been stunned — they had solely agreed to cover coronavirus checks, not all remedy.
The White House rushed to clarify. Stocks tumbled further.
Morale bottomed out in the White Home.
One White House official stated that was the week it all changed. Along with the president’s prime-time remarks and the stock market pauses, the virus unexpectedly overturned America’s collective culture. In a span of a number of minutes that Wednesday night time, Hollywood star Tom Hanks announced he had tested constructive for the virus, the NCAA’s March Insanity event was cancelled, the NBA suspended its season.
“That week made the Democrats' b.s. impeachment seem trivial,” one other White Home official quipped.
Every day life was not going to be the same.
Within every week, a lot of the U.S. can be shut down.
Every week later, Congress would cross the most important economic restoration bill ever assembled.
Right here’s what these two weeks felt like inside the White House.
DAY 1: MARCH 16U.S. instances: 6,400
U.S. deaths: 83
Inventory market: 20,188.52
The president and his group decided dramatic action was wanted to blunt the unfold of the virus.
That they had seen horrifying new projections from the Imperial School in London that confirmed hundreds of thousands dying if more extreme measures weren't taken. Chastened by the brand new knowledge, the president’s demeanor modified.
On March 16, a Monday, the president announced new recommendations that People shouldn't collect in groups larger than 10 — 5 occasions extra excessive than tips launched by the CDC simply the day earlier than.
It was the beginning of the White House’s “15 Days to Sluggish the Spread.”
“With several weeks of targeted motion, we will flip the corner and turn it shortly,” Trump stated. “Our government is ready to do no matter it takes.”
Dr. Deborah Birx, a worldwide well being specialist tasked with leading the coronavirus process drive’s efforts, made a direct plea to the American individuals to heed the rules.
“We actually need individuals to be separated presently, to be capable of tackle this virus comprehensively that we can't see, for which we don’t have a vaccine or a therapeutic,” she warned.
The president dispatched Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to hammer out a stimulus bill with Congress to fortify the financial system. Mnuchin gave a dire, however prescient, warning to Senate Republicans during a lunch on Capitol Hill: act now or the U.S. might see double-digit unemployment numbers.
DAY 3: MARCH 18U.S. instances: 13,700
U.S. deaths: 150
Stock market: 19,898.92
On Wednesday, the streets in main cities like San Francisco and New York began to empty.
At the White Home, the president forged had a brand new message: The nation is at conflict.
“To this present day, no one has seen anything like what they have been capable of do during World Struggle II,” Trump stated at the press podium. “And now it’s our time. We must sacrifice together because we are all on this collectively and we’ll come by way of together.”
He invoked a wartime regulation — the Defense Production Act — granting him broad authority to direct producers to make the gear wanted in a crisis. However he stated it will only use the regulation in a “worst case state of affairs.”
America was dealing with an encroaching, deadly, “invisible enemy,” Trump stated.
At the White House, the enemy was already within.
Members of the president’s internal circle stored getting exposed to individuals with coronavirus. Several prime staffers, including Ivanka Trump and appearing chief of employees Mick Mulvaney, had to isolate themselves.
Members of Congress closest to the president — together with his incoming chief of employees Mark Meadows — have been pressured to self-quarantine. And even because the president started to use the press briefing room day after day, his personal press secretary Stephanie Grisham, was conspicuously missing. She, like others in the White Home who have been exposed, have been following the very same advice being dished out at the podium: keep residence.
The White Home upped its defenses. Docs took temperatures outdoors complicated gates. Contained in the West Wing, every sneeze and cough was seen as a potential menace. Stations with hand sanitizer have been arrange across the White Home. Before anybody might are available contact with the president, temperatures have been taken. The modifications appeared each distinctive and unusual for a employees accustomed to the fortress-like environment of the Trump White House.
The White Home briefing room, often packed like sardines with correspondents and photographers, was whittled right down to a small group of journalists. When a reporter came down with tell-tale flu-like signs, a colleague rubbed down the individual’s seat with a Clorox wipe.
The country equally upped its defenses. Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau jointly announced that the U.S. and Canada would briefly prohibit all non-essential journey, the most dramatic measure at the border there since September 11, 2001.
Capitol Hill rushed to offer economic defenses for People. That same day, the Senate voted in favor of an enormous aid package deal that enhanced unemployment benefits and guaranteed paid depart and free coronavirus testing.
DAY 4: MARCH 19U.S. instances: 19,100
U.S. deaths: 206
Stock market: 20,087.19
On Thursday, the president stepped as much as the podium determined to point out progress.
With the Meals and Drug Administration’s Dr. Stephen Hahn, Trump introduced that two medicine — the antimalarial drug chloroquine and an experimental antiviral remdesivir — had proven constructive signs as potential coronavirus remedies.
Then the docs provided a dose of unwelcome reality.
“We have to truly know concerning the safety and the effectiveness, and that’s executed by means of the medical trial course of. So it’s these knowledge which are going to tell the selections which might be finally made about security and efficacy,” Hahn stated. “This is an unprecedented state of affairs.”
However simply because the president was calling for unification in a second of disaster, he pointed his finger at the media.
“It amazes me once I learn the things that I learn,” he stated.
Trump was notably incensed by a question about why he had began utilizing “Chinese language virus” as an alternative of coronavirus. No other world leader used the time period, and the World Well being Organization has long advised that attaching a selected ethnicity or location to a disease can result in discrimination.
But the president and senior officials in his administration have been intent on bringing consideration to the virus’s Chinese language origins, as well as Beijing’s early obfuscation of the virus they argued value the world weeks of prevention.
Trump batted apart questions concerning the selection, launching right into a broader tirade about destructive media coverage.
“Final week, it was all chaos,” Trump stated, beginning to wind up. “You see me. There’s no chaos. I've no chaos. I’m the one telling everyone to be calm. There’s no chaos on the White House.”
Perhaps not, however one White Home official stated he had been considering so much concerning the HBO miniseries “Chernobyl,” a present about info, and what happens when a government lies to its individuals concerning the risks they face.
DAY 9: MARCH 24U.S. instances: 65,800
U.S. deaths: 780
Stock market: 20,704.91
The initial grimness contained in the White House subsided as the bare-bones employees organized itself around a single mission — stall the coronavirus.
For the primary time, a number of officials stated, the complete White House felt like it was unified, regardless that it was exhausting at occasions to discern who was truly in charge.
“I feel like we are lastly all hitting our stride,” one senior administration official stated.
However simply as individuals inside the White Home felt like they have been getting everyone on the same page, the information was solely getting worse.
On March 24, a Tuesday, it appeared the governors and public health officers clamoring for Trump to set off the Protection Manufacturing Act had lastly gotten their want. Federal Emergency Administration Company chief Peter Gaynor announced that morning his workforce had gotten the go-ahead to make use of the regulation to acquire medical provides.
The declaration touched off a day of confusion about whether the administration had truly enforced the statute to hurry manufacturing of check kits and protecting masks, each things that have been briefly provide in some areas.
A FEMA spokesperson then reversed course that night time, saying the agency had discovered what it needed on the personal market. It was about-face that may reverberate for days, as Trump continued to waffle publicly concerning the DPA — citing obscure fears about nationalizing business — earlier than lastly triggering it Friday amid a spat with Basic Motors over manufacturing ventilators.
The ventilator scarcity touched a nerve in states that feared they have been on the precipice of getting to make the gut-wrenching selection — if extra coronavirus sufferers want a ventilator than there can be found, who will get to reside?
During a midday press convention in New York City, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s frustration with Trump boiled over.
“You decide the 26,000 people who find themselves going to die,” Cuomo lashed out, after Trump had only agreed to send four,000 ventilators to the state — properly in need of the 30,000 the state had requested.
Trump snapped back: Did Cuomo even want that many ventilators?
Then Trump caught everyone off-guard when he declared a objective to end the nation’s coronavirus lockdown by Easter Sunday, April 12. The formidable deadline rattled well being officials, who warned that resuming normal activity so soon would prolong the coronavirus crisis by creating new clusters of disease simply as some fashions showed the pandemic near peaking.
Different states, including Ohio, South Dakota and Maryland, have additionally stated they don’t anticipate peak an infection rates to hit till Might. Several states in the upper Midwest have even started forming pacts to keep strict social-distancing tips in place if the president lifts the nationwide guidelines early.
Outdoors the U.S., different nations have been similarly planning for the long-haul that very same day. The summer time Olympic games, set to start in Tokyo in July, have been delayed till 2021. And in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered the most important lockdown within the world — directing India’s 1.three billion residents to stay house for 21 days.
DAY 11: MARCH 26U.S. instances: 101,700
U.S. deaths: 1,295
Inventory market: 22,552.17
America awoke on March 26, a Thursday, to a staggering determine: three.3 million individuals had filed for unemployment during the last week.
Never before had the country seen such numbers.
The explosion of weekly claims was almost five occasions the peak hit in the course of the 2008 Nice Recession. It shattered the earlier high of 695,000 in October 1982. It was a 1,000 % improve from the prior weeks’ unemployment claims. And it didn’t even mirror unbiased contractors, some part-time and lower-wage earners and gig-economy staff.
By the top of the day, the U.S. had acquired one other sobering quantity: More than 1,000 residents had now died from the coronavirus.
As the number of instances worldwide soared previous half one million, the U.S. additionally overtook China as the worldwide leader in instances of the new pathogen. And the U.S. was nonetheless ramping up its testing capability. As of Thursday, the country had carried out roughly 552,000 exams, Pence advised reporters. It was a dramatic improve, but states are still warning of shortages and rationing who will get a check. In the coming days, more business labs will come on-line and officers anticipate case numbers to continue to climb.
The headlines about all these figures irritated the president. He fretted on the sliding inventory market, some extent of his satisfaction throughout his presidency. However he discovered comfort in polls displaying rising approval of his dealing with of the pandemic.
He tangled with members of the press, however reveled in having the highlight on him throughout primetime briefings, even when it pressured his specialists to do injury control later.
Still, advisers have been annoyed to observe the Trump administration’s calling card, the financial system, evaporate while they confronted criticisms concerning the lack of testing and gear for first responders.
With Trump’s plans for spring like campaign rallies with fans and weekends at Mar-a-Lago disrupted, the president fixated on how to stabilize the financial system.
Assist was on the best way, he stated, in the type of a $2.2 trillion financial recovery package deal that had passed the Senate the night time before. The legislation will “present aid for American staff and households in this hour of want” by way of direct checks for many People, loans for small businesses and 4 months of expanded unemployment benefits.
That very same afternoon, the president despatched out a obscure, but optimistic letter to state governors saying the White House was trying to ease up tips as testing capabilities expanded.
DAY 15: MARCH 30It’s the top of “15 Days to Sluggish The Unfold.”
But what’s next stays a thriller.
On Monday or Tuesday, White House officers have stated Trump will reveal his subsequent plan.
Over the weekend, Pence and a small group of public health officials are assembly to debate the newest testing knowledge. They’ll temporary the president about what they assume is lifelike.
Pence has referred to as Trump’s Easter aim “aspirational,” however hinted they could supply differentiated recommendation based mostly on how much the virus has infiltrated certain regions. Aides have hinted they could pivot to a county-by-county strategy, recommending that sure communities resume some business activities, whereas others remain on lockdown. It’s a middle-ground answer that specialists have cautioned might be troublesome to use, not to mention enforce.
However White House officers — and People at giant — are in search of any certainty they will discover, a glimmer of the light at the end of the tunnel.
But the unknowns concerning the coronavirus abound. Do those that get well from coronavirus turn out to be really immune? How do underlying well being circumstances have an effect on the severity of the virus? And, most essential, how extensively has it spread?
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s prime infectious illness skilled who has develop into a trusted voice to the general public from the White Home podium, underscored the nervousness that has pervaded America — and the White Home.
“You don’t make the timeline,” he stated, talking during one among his almost-daily appearances. “The virus makes the timeline.”
Brianna Ehly, Anita Kumar, Daniel Lippman and Blake Hounshell contributed to this report.
Src: Inside the White House during '15 Days to Slow the Spread'
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