President Donald Trump sent a notably nasty letter blaming Sen. Charles Schumer's support for impeachment in part for New York's lack of readiness.
‘Confused’ and ‘bad senator:’ Trump and Schumer trade barbs over coronavirus response
Month: April 2020
Trump tears into Schumer, says his impeachment focus left NY unprepared for coronavirus
President Trump tore into Sen. Chuck Schumer on Thursday, calling the top Democrat a “bad” senator whose focus on impeachment left New York “completely unprepared” for the coronavirus. “No wonder AOC and others are thinking about running against you in the primary. If they did, they would likely win,” Trump taunted in a letter. “If...
Trump Responds to Schumer’s Coronavirus Criticism: ‘I Never Knew How Bad a Senator You Are’
Trump Blames New York Coronavirus Crisis on Impeachment ‘Hoax’
CDC reportedly set to recommend everyone wear face masks outside
Senate Republicans have no excuse for their piss-poor coronavirus response. No excuse whatsoever
As the U.S. death toll due to the novel coronavirus climbs, congressional Republicans want to make sure they aren't left holding the bag for the federal government's piss-poor response in the early days of the burgeoning crisis. This week, GOP lawmakers have been trying out a new excuse: impeachment. That's right—that moment when 52 of 53 Senate Republicans voted to acquit Donald Trump, ensuring he would be at the helm right as the country was facing a burgeoning public health crisis unlike any seen in decades.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell gave their new excuse a test run on Tuesday during an interview with a conservative radio host, arguing impeachment had "diverted the attention of the government.” Later Tuesday, Trump himself shot that idea down, saying, “I don't think I would have done any better had I not been impeached." But after being singularly responsible for voting to keep the most incompetent president in history in charge of the federal response to a pandemic, Senate Republicans are pretty desperate to pin the blame on Democrats.
“It’s unfortunate that during the early days of a global pandemic, the Senate was paralyzed by a partisan impeachment trial,” Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton told Politico in a deeply reported piece on the congressional response. A GOP aide added, “The entire executive branch was consumed by impeachment, and it totally distracted Congress, too.” But for impeachment, the aide said, there would have been "a lot more public oversight to scrutinize all of this.”
So on one hand, Republicans are pinning the blame on Democrats for being the only party responsible enough to hold Trump accountable for trying to extort a foreign government to interfere in the 2020 elections. On the other hand, Republicans want the public to believe the party that has spent the last decade obsessed with stripping some 20 million Americans of health care access was suddenly going to take a keen and pointed interest in, well, health care.
Of course, when Republicans had the chance to feign interest in the issue, they didn’t. Here’s what happened: On Jan. 24, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee held an all-Senators briefing on the novel coronavirus. It was poorly attended, with only about 14 senators present according to Politico. But that was the briefing that first kicked off an urgent round of stock sell-offs by several GOP senators and a Democratic one. Nonetheless, the bipartisan statement following the briefing from U.S. Sens. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Patty Murray of Washington, Jim Risch of Idaho, and Bob Menendez of New Jersey was rather bland, saying they were "monitoring the outbreak" and thanking administration officials for the briefing. "The safety of U.S. citizens here domestically, as well as in China and other affected countries, is our first priority," read the statement. "We will continue to work closely with administration officials to ensure the United States is prepared to respond.”
That's about the level of urgency one might expect from any bipartisan statement. But it was Senate Democrats who picked up from there. On Jan. 26, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer urged the federal government to declare the novel coronavirus a public health emergency in order to free up $85 million previously allocated funds to battle infection diseases.
“Should the outbreak get worse they’re going to need immediate access to critical federal funds that at present they can’t access,” Schumer told reporters at his Manhattan office. At that point, just four cases had been confirmed in the U.S. after the first positive test had been confirmed in Washington State on Jan. 20. “We aren’t here to propel panic or stoke fear, but to rather keep a good proactive effort by the CDC from going on interrupted,” Schumer said.
Two days later, Washington Sens. Murray and Maria Cantwell sent a letter to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar requesting continued updates on the nation's capacity to respond to the highly infectious disease.
“We write to express concern about the rapidly evolving 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV), to urge your continued robust and scientifically driven response to the situation, and to assess whether any additional resources or action by Congress are needed at this time,” Murray and Cantwell wrote. “A quick and effective response to the 2019-nCoV requires public health officials around the world work together to share reliable information about the disease and insight into steps taken to prevent, diagnose, and treat it appropriately.”
It was also Democrats that pushed for an emergency supplemental funding bill to combat the virus at a private briefing on the matter with Sec. Azar on Feb. 5—the day Senate Republicans ultimately voted to acquit Trump on charges that he had abused his power and obstructed Congress. After leaving that closed-door meeting, Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut was apoplectic about the nonchalance of Trump officials. “[T]hey aren’t taking this seriously enough,” he tweeted. “Notably, no request for ANY emergency funding, which is a big mistake. Local health systems need supplies, training, screening staff etc. And they need it now.”
The first sign the Trump administration might be taking the novel coronavirus seriously originally came on Jan. 31, when the White House issued a ban on travelers from China and declared the public health emergency Schumer had been pushing for.
However, Trump spent the entirety of the next month downplaying the threat. At a Feb. 10 campaign rally, Trump declared, “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away." He mocked "Cryin' Chuck Schumer" on Feb. 25 for urging Trump to ask for more than $2.5 billion for an initial supplemental to respond to the novel coronavirus. On Feb. 26, Trump predicted at a White House briefing that in a couple of days the number of coronavirus cases in the nation would be "down to close to zero," adding, "that’s a pretty good job we’ve done." Mission accomplished.
The only thing Trump was really focused on after Senate Republicans voted to clear him in early February was a complete and total purge of nonloyalists in his administration and getting back to his beloved campaign rallies.
On Feb. 13, Trump tweeted, "We want bad people out of our government!”
On Feb. 21, the Washington Post reported, "President Trump has instructed his White House to identify and force out officials across his administration who are not seen as sufficiently loyal, a post-impeachment escalation that administration officials say reflects a new phase of a campaign of retribution and restructuring ahead of the November election."
Trump tapped Johnny McEntee, a 29-year-old personal aide and former body man to the president, to run that operation. Top officials at the Defense Department and White House National Security Council were forced out. The White House was also combing through people at the Justice and State Departments. No mention in the article of the novel coronavirus or elevating people with solid expertise and time-tested credentials in certain aspects of governing. Trump was laser-focused on beefing up his administration with the lard of loyalists. He needed more sycophantic “yes” men, people who would feed his emaciated ego. That was Trump’s main focus in February as he started eyeing his reelection campaign.
Throughout February, the main thing that became clear both in public and private was that most top Trump officials exhibited a distinct lack of urgency about the coming pandemic. In addition, with very few exceptions, Senate Republicans weren't using any leverage to get Trump to act. Almost to a person, Senate Republicans continued to be dismissive about the threat, especially in their public statements.
Meanwhile, starting in late January, Senate Democrats started sounding the alarm bells both behind closed doors and publicly. Some of the most vocal among them were Sens. Schumer, Murray, Murphy, and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who was also running for president and pushed hardest on the issue among the remaining Democrats in the race.
Even by March 10, when Trump went to huddle with Senate Republicans on Capitol Hill, he was still selling the American people a bill of goods about the catastrophe ahead. The novel coronavirus would simply "go away, just stay calm," Trump told reporters, adding, "it's really working out. And a lot of good things are going to happen." Senate Republicans just smiled along, giddily grinning ear to ear as Trump minimized the threat. For his part, McConnell announced he would simply step aside and let House Speaker Nancy Pelosi negotiate the first major coronavirus relief package directly with the White House.
By the time Pelosi had finished those painstaking negotiations and passed the relief bill through her chamber on Saturday, March 14, McConnell was nowhere to be found. He had recessed the Senate and skipped town for a long weekend away. Ultimately, the Senate would delay passing the bill—intended in part to help struggling Americans through dire financial times—for another four days.
Democrats Create Committee To Scrutinize Trump’s Response to Coronavirus
Democrats have created a new House committee designed to scrutinize and review the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus outbreak.
Committee Will “Examine All Aspects of the Federal Response” to Coronavirus
Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the coronavirus committee on Thursday. They will investigate the management of the bailout package to help coronavirus victims (which amounts of over $2 trillion of government spending), and the general response from the White House, President Trump and his administration to the pandemic.
The panel, which will be chaired by James Clyburn, the Democrat House Majority Whip, will “examine all aspects of the federal response to the coronavirus and ensure the taxpayer’s dollars are being wisely and efficiently spent,” Pelosi told reporters. “The panel will root out waste, fraud, and abuse; it will protect against price-gauging, profiteering, and political favoritism,” she continued, saying that the country needed “transparency and accountability” in managing the outbreak and the funds. “Where there’s money there’s also frequently mischief.”
RELATED: Mike Pence Puts America First In Virus Supplies
Schiff Demands 9/11 Style “Nonpartisan Commission”
It follows an announcement on Wednesday. from Representative Adam Schiff to set up a 9/11-style “nonpartisan commission” to investigate the administration’s response to coronavirus.
“After Pearl Harbor and 9/11, we looked at what went wrong to learn from our mistakes,” Schiff tweeted. “Once we’ve recovered, we need a nonpartisan commission to review our response and how we can better prepare for the next pandemic. I’m working on a bill to do that.”
After Pearl Harbor and 9/11, we looked at what went wrong to learn from our mistakes.
Once we've recovered, we need a nonpartisan commission to review our response and how we can better prepare for the next pandemic.
I’m working on a bill to do that.https://t.co/uqO3BwVldN
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) April 1, 2020
We all know where this is going. Does anyone think the Democrats won’t simply use both the commission and the committee to attack the President for doing all he can to slow the outbreak of the Chinese coronavirus? Just like impeachment, this is going to end up as a partisan attack on the President, most likely led by Pelosi, Schumer, and Schiff – all working together to batter the deaths of American citizens over the head of President Trump for political pointscoring.
The post Democrats Create Committee To Scrutinize Trump’s Response to Coronavirus appeared first on The Political Insider.
Lawmakers clash over whether Trump impeachment trial distracted government’s coronavirus response
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., hit back at Senate Major Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., over his claims that the Democrat-led impeachment of President Trump distracted the federal government from handling the coronavirus outbreak during the nascent days of the pandemic.
Schiff Wants 9/11-Style Commission to Investigate Trump Administration’s Response to Coronavirus
Adam Schiff says he will introduce a bill to create a “nonpartisan” 9/11-style commission to study why America was “so unprepared” for the coronavirus pandemic.
Let’s repeat that.
The man who bogged down an entire nation with impeachment dreams while the coronavirus was beginning to flourish, is mobilizing the House Intelligence Committee, which he chairs, to figure out why the country wasn’t necessarily focused on the problem at hand.
Pearl Harbor, 9/11 … Coronavirus
Schiff shared an article from the Washington Post that cited his desire to begin an investigation once the crisis subsides.
“After Pearl Harbor and 9/11, we looked at what went wrong to learn from our mistakes,” Schiff (D-CA) tweeted. “Once we’ve recovered, we need a nonpartisan commission to review our response and how we can better prepare for the next pandemic.”
“I’m working on a bill to do that,” he added.
The Post article goes on to cite positive and negative actions taken by the Trump administration, leaving little doubt as to who Schiff is actually going after.
After Pearl Harbor and 9/11, we looked at what went wrong to learn from our mistakes.
Once we’ve recovered, we need a nonpartisan commission to review our response and how we can better prepare for the next pandemic.
I’m working on a bill to do that.https://t.co/uqO3BwVldN
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) April 1, 2020
RELATED: Watch Nancy Pelosi Completely Ignore Trump’s Coronavirus Comments During SOTU Speech
Says Trump ‘Screwed Up’
Further proof that Schiff is focused not on “our mistakes” but the supposed mistakes made by President Trump himself are comments the impeachment manager made the night before.
In an appearance on MSNBC, Schiff said those blaming his impeachment sham for distracting the country were inadvertently admitting that “the administration screwed up this response.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blamed the highly partisan effort for distracting lawmakers when coronavirus was.
“It came up while we were tied down in the impeachment trial,” McConnell asserted. “And I think it diverted the attention of the government because everything every day was all about impeachment.”
Rep. @AdamSchiff wants a congressional committee to investigate federal response to coronavirus. @RepDougCollins: “You know, for him to come back at this point and try to regain the spotlight from his failed attempts at impeachment is just sad for the American people.” pic.twitter.com/zt6S4ntk1u
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) April 2, 2020
Schiff Is Full Of It
“Yeah, the president said something similar, which, you know, was an interesting acknowledgment that the administration screwed up this response,” Schiff claimed without evidence.
“The facts are quite clear that the president’s weeks long, maybe months-long delay in taking this seriously has had catastrophic consequences that we are only now beginning to see the scope of.”
The facts ARE quite clear.
While Schiff, Pelosi, and the Democrats were developing their impeachment arguments, President Trump would issue travel restrictions with China, establish the Coronavirus Task Force, and declare coronavirus a public health emergency.
If there is any investigation, it needs to encompass the resistance party’s lack of action or hindrance to those trying to take action.
The post Schiff Wants 9/11-Style Commission to Investigate Trump Administration’s Response to Coronavirus appeared first on The Political Insider.
'Ventilators' donated by Elon Musk can't be used on coronavirus patients, health officials say
