Trump cries 'mutiny' by governors, then mutes his complaint

Presidential powers pandemonium

If fear of coronavirus doesn't provoke compulsive fever-checking, what might do it is trying to make sense of President Donald Trump's views on the omnipotence of his powers.

Trump began his day Tuesday on Twitter, expanding on his declarations from a day earlier that “the president of the United States calls the shots,” not the nation's governors, on when the country should begin to reopen. In a tweet aimed at Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, Trump recited help the federal government sent to New York: "I got it all done for him, and everyone else, and now he seems to want Independence! That won’t happen!"

Next came this tweet: "Tell the Democrat Governors that 'Mutiny On The Bounty' was one of my all time favorite movies." It wasn't clear whether he meant the 1935 or 1962 versions, but strangely, he seemed to identify with the villain of the story, the cruel and tyrannical captain, William Bligh.

"A good old fashioned mutiny every now and then is an exciting and invigorating thing to watch, especially when the mutineers need so much from the Captain. Too easy!" the tweet continued. The analogy doesn't work. Governors are elected officials, not his crew to command, and the Constitution protects the states' powers, but that's how Trump made his point — which he then tossed overboard in his early-evening coronavirus briefing.

"They know when it's time to open. I'm not going to pressure them," Trump said of the governors. "I'm not going to say to Governor Cuomo: ‘You've got to open in seven days,’ ” the president said.

Trump's threats starting Monday to bigfoot the governors triggered Cuomo's interview blitz with cable networks and other news shows. He accused Trump of behaving like he was a "king" and said there was "no value" in watching the president's briefings, which "could be a comedy skit." As for when to let up on his state's shutdown, Cuomo said, "We could lose all the progress we made in one week if we do it wrong." If Trump "ordered me to reopen in a way that would endanger the public health of the people of my state, I wouldn't do it," Cuomo said.

But hours later, at his own briefing, Cuomo declared a unilateral cease-fire. “I put my hand out in total partnership and cooperation with the president,” the governor said. “If he wants a fight, he’s not going to get it from me, period.” For more, see Newsday's story by Yancey Roy with Laura Figueroa Hernandez.

WHO you gonna call out?

Trump said Tuesday that he was cutting off U.S. payments to the World Health Organization during the coronavirus pandemic, accusing the UN agency of failing to do enough to stop the virus from spreading when it first surfaced in China.

“The WHO failed in its basic duty and must be held accountable,” Trump said at his briefing. He said the U.S. would be reviewing the WHO’s actions to stop the virus before making any decision on resuming aid.

Trump has rejected criticism that he also was too slow to act after others monitoring the Chinese outbreak, including U.S. intelligence agencies and other government officials, sounded alarms. He also accepted China’s misleading assurances early on.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres responded to Trump’s announcement by saying now is not the time to end support to the WHO, calling it “absolutely critical” to the global effort to combat COVID-19.

Janison: Coming distractions

Just about every day there's fresh reporting about flaws in the government's pandemic response. Among the latest from The Wall Street Journal: The Federal Emergency Management Agency entered the COVID-19 crisis with thousands of positions vacant — and with the leadership of its parent, the Department of Homeland Security, preoccupied with immigration.

But Trump has a knack from pulling attention away from troublesome subjects, writes Newsday's Dan Janison. In the past few days, he rolled out a suspense-building device from his days on television with a retweet that sparked speculation on whether he was about to fire his top infectious diseases expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci. It churned for much of a news cycle until the White House blamed news organizations for "ridiculous" chatter.

Next up was his declaration on Monday that his "authority is total" to reopen the country, regardless of what governors think. He tempered that position later Tuesday, but the pot was stirred.

Fauci's wish: briefer briefings

The days are getting longer for Fauci when he has to attend Trump's marathon coronavirus briefings, which also are extended grievance-airing sessions for the president.

Fauci said his public role is important but conceded that the duration of those briefings — Monday’s ran for nearly 2½ hours — was "really draining" and that doesn’t even count preparation time and waiting for it to start.

“If I had been able to just make a few comments and then go to work, that would have really been much better,” Fauci said in an Associated Press interview Tuesday. “It isn’t the idea of being there and answering questions, which I really think is important for the American public. It’s the amount of time.”

He got part of his wish on Tuesday, when the briefing ran under 90 minutes. But Trump ended it without calling on his top medical experts to speak.

Obama blesses Biden's run

Former President Barack Obama endorsed Joe Biden’s White House bid on Tuesday in a 12-minute video, telling Americans his former vice president "has the character and the experience to guide us through one of our darkest times and heal us through a long recovery.”

Obama didn't mention Trump, his successor, by name, but called on Americans to unite in a “great awakening against a politics that too often has been characterized by corruption, carelessness, self-dealing, disinformation, ignorance and just plain meanness.”

Obama’s video (you can watch it here) came a day after Sen. Bernie Sanders endorsed his ex-rival. It also marked Obama's return to presidential politics more than three years since leaving the White House and after staying on the sidelines while the Democratic primaries played out.

Going to the well

Trump brought his campaign against Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, into a White House meeting with eight coronavirus survivors.

One of them, Karen Whitsett, is a Democratic state legislator from Michigan who credits an antimalarial drug the president has touted, hydroxychloroquine, for her recovery.

“Had you not brought this to the forefront … I wouldn’t be here today even having this conversation with you and being able to talk about the needs of Detroit," Whitsett said.

Trump remarked: “I don’t see her voting for Sleepy Joe Biden. I’m not gonna ask her that question. If she votes for Sleepy Joe, I’d be surprised."

More coronavirus news

Hospitalizations of coronavirus patients continued to level off in New York on Tuesday, as Cuomo said the state has probably hit its apex, even though a staggering 778 more people died and the toll of lost lives approached 11,000.

See a roundup of the latest pandemic news from Long Island and beyond by Newsday's reporting staff, written by Bart Jones. For a full list of Newsday's coronavirus stories, click here.

What else is happening:

• The Treasury Department has ordered Trump’s name be printed on stimulus checks the IRS Service is rushing to send to tens of millions of Americans, a process that is expected to slow their delivery by several days, senior agency officials told The Washington Post. The plan applies to paper checks. Direct deposits aren’t affected.
• Trump said roughly 20 states that have avoided the worse of the outbreaks could be the first to begin restarting their economies, possibly even before May 1. “We think we’re going to be able to get them open very quickly,” he said.
• Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Bronx) urged FEMA to approve special funeral assistance for New Yorkers whose family members died of coronavirus.
• More than 80% of the benefits from a tax change inserted into last month's $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief package will go to millionaires, especially hedge fund investors and owners of real estate businesses, a report from Congress' nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation found. The break was put in the bill by Senate Republicans, The Washington Post reported.
• Sanders said Tuesday that it would be “irresponsible” for his loyalists not to support Biden. "Do we choose to sit it out and allow the most dangerous president in modern American history to get reelected?” Sanders said in an interview with The Associated Press. The 78-year-old Vermont senator also called it “probably a very fair assumption” that he won't run for president again.
• The U.S. Census Bureau has delayed its field operations for the 2020 census until June 1 and is asking Congress for permission to postpone reporting population totals, used for congressional apportionment, until April 2021 — a four-month delay. See Olivia Winslow's story for Newsday.