Late last month Senior White House Advisor Jared Kushner suggested the White House had done everything it needed to do to fight the deadly coronavirus pandemic, and even declared victory.
“The federal government rose to the challenge, and this is a great success story, and I think that, that’s really what needs to be told,” Kushner told “Fox & Friends”, to great national outrage.
Also late last month The New York Times reported President Trump “rarely attends the task force meetings that precede” what back then were daily press briefings that had effectively morphed into campaign rallies instead of Coronavirus Task Force news briefings.
Now a review of Vice President Mike Pence’s daily schedule by NCRM shows he has slacked off holding the White House Coronavirus Task Force meetings. And all this comes as new CDC and FEMA projections show infections are expected to increase nearly ten-fold and deaths to nearly double, all by June 1. Currently there are 70,761 confirmed U.S. coronavirus deaths, and 1,221,474 cases.
NCRM reviewed all of Vice President Pence’s daily schedules. In the month of March the Vice President led 24 Coronavirus Task Force meetings. In April, that number dropped to 18. Last week Pence held only two Task Force meetings. This week, he skipped holding one Monday but did hold what appeared to be a much scaled-down meeting today (some may have teleconferenced), as these photos show:
No one knows what is discussed during these meetings, who attends, or what they decide. In fact, the White House has issued only one readout from the meetings, and that was on March 1.
Not only is Vice President Pence no longer holding daily Coronavirus Task Force meetings, but President Trump has banned all its members, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, from testifying before the House.
The President’s reasoning?
“Because the House is a set up,” Trump told reporters Tuesday before flying off to Arizona. “The House is a bunch of Trump haters … they, frankly, want our situation to be unsuccessful, which means death.”