In a breathtaking spell of propagandizing, a President who has no medical expertise and has incessantly downplayed the emergency bulldozed into the White House Briefing Room
to kneecap one of the nation's top health officials, Dr. Robert Redfield. The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had told lawmakers it could be fall 2021 before there are sufficient vaccine stocks to allow normal life to resume. He also said masks work.
"I think he got the message maybe confused," the President said of the vaccine comments and added that Redfield "didn't understand the question" on masks -- even though the doctor's answers had been clearly considered and carefully worded.
The President's undercutting of Redfield came in a week in which he has repeatedly rejected the best advice of health authorities, including by
holding an indoor campaign rally. He's also challenged the science of global warming as historic fires rage in Western states. But he's not the only top government official chafing at pandemic-induced restrictions that are designed to keep people safe from a highly infectious pathogen.
In an extraordinary statement on Wednesday, Attorney General
William Barr lashed out at state governors using executive powers to impose restrictions that keep businesses closed in an effort to save lives and slow the spread of the virus.
"You know, putting a national lockdown, stay at home orders, is like house arrest. Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history," Barr said during an appearance hosted by Hillsdale College, a private, conservative school in Michigan.
Trump is trying to create an impression of a return to normality
before Election Day -- one reason he pushed so hard for
the return of Big Ten college football, a conference with teams in Midwestern swing states that announced Wednesday it will kick off its season in late October. Announcing a vaccine -- whether one has completed clinical trials or not -- appears to be a key part of the President's strategy.
And his pressure on Redfield left no doubt that his short-term electoral considerations are far more important to him than a credible inoculation that Americans trust.
The President's power play also left the position of the CDC chief untenable, even though his statements were essentially accurate.
After a telephone call from the President and Trump's public rebuke, a CDC official told CNN that Redfield now realized that he misunderstood the questions about the vaccines.
His climbdown left his credibility shattered and means that any future statements he makes will be viewed through the prism of Trump's bullying interference based on incessant efforts to undermine science.
Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a professor of Medicine at George Washington University, said the President's performance on Wednesday was "stunning."
"What Dr. Redfield said today made complete sense. It was common sense. What he said was it's going to take a very long time to vaccinate the US," Reiner told CNN's Erin Burnett.
More broadly, Trump's behavior showed how a President who disdains details and has never leveled with Americans about the virus has been such a failure in mitigating the worst health crisis in 100 years.
By repeatedly talking about a vaccine as if it was already available, and not subject to rigorous clinical trials, Trump also cast doubt on the process of scientific evaluation that will be required before it is approved by regulators.
His comments are unlikely to build trust in a vaccine that was already being
greeted with skepticism among many Americans in polls. A lack of trust in the program is the nightmare scenario since a vaccine is the best hope of eventually ending the pandemic and restoring vibrance to American life.
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