Now Pence self-isolates as coronavirus takes a White House tour

The bug house

The virus that President Donald Trump calls the "invisible enemy" is taking a visible toll on the head count at the White House. It hasn't been lost on Trump that the latest coronavirus cases and scares at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. undercut his message that the nation is ready to reopen.

News came over the weekend that three top medical doctors on the White House coronavirus task force — infection diseases expert Anthony Fauci, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn — put themselves in quarantine after contact with someone who tested positive. All three will testify remotely via video link before the Senate health committee on Tuesday. On Sunday night, it was announced that committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) will run the hearing by video because he's begun a two-week self-quarantine after an aide tested positive.

Next came word Sunday that Vice President Mike Pence was self-isolating after routine testing revealed on Friday that his press secretary, Katie Miller, had the virus. She has been the primary spokeswoman for the task force, which Pence leads. Miller's case has caused extra anxiety in the White House because she makes lots of in-person contacts during her day-to-day work, CNN reported. She also is married to a close aide to Trump, immigration adviser Stephen Miller, who is expected to keep away for the foreseeable future, The New York Times reported.

A Pence spokesman said the vice president, who continues to test negative, "is not in quarantine.” But Pence has been at home since returning to Washington from a day trip to Iowa on Friday and did not appear at Trump’s meeting with military leaders Saturday at the White House. Neither did two members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who’ve had their own brushes with coronavirus, Bloomberg News reported. Officials said Pence planned to work from the White House on Monday but is keeping a distance from others.

A senior administration official told the Times that the president was spooked last week that a personal valet, who is among those who serve him food and has tested positive, had not been wearing a face mask, though Trump doesn't wear one. Senior officials believe that the disease is spreading rapidly through the warren of cramped offices that make up the three floors of the West Wing, the Times reported.

“It is scary to go to work,” Kevin Hassett, a top economic adviser to the president, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” program on Sunday. Hassett said he has worn a mask at times at the White House but conceded: “I think that I’d be a lot safer if I was sitting at home than I would be going to the West Wing.”

Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Friday that the White House is following procedures "to keep this building safe, which means contact tracing." Yet Trump remains skeptical about the need for such comprehensive steps in the outside world. Democrats are pushing the Trump administration to develop a national testing strategy as public health experts warn that the U.S. isn't doing enough to ensure a safe reopening of the economy, reports Newsday's Laura Figueroa Hernandez.

Trump's team: Jobs haven't hit bottom

Three Trump economic officials said on the Sunday morning talk shows that they expect unemployment to get significantly worse this month before it starts getting better. On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the U.S. economy lost 20.5 million jobs in April, with the unemployment rate reaching 14.7% that month. 

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, asked if the nation's jobless rate could be heading to near 25%, said, "We could be." Hassett, the economic adviser, foresaw a rate "close to 20%" in the May jobs report.

Larry Kudlow, chairman of the White House's National Economic Council, said he expects "very difficult numbers" in May but also predicted "a glimmer of hope." Speaking of the job losses, he said: "About 80% of it was furloughs and temporary layoffs. That, by the way, doesn't assure that you will go back to a job, but it suggests strongly that the cord between the worker and the business is still intact."

Kudlow and Mnuchin also said they want to hold off on another stimulus package until they can see how the trillions of dollars already committed will start working. (See Newsday's story by Scott Eidler.) Tom Brune reports for Newsday that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to put a relief package up for a vote as early as this week, setting the table for negotiations with Republicans and the White House.

Pelosi said House Democrats’ top priorities include $500 billion to $1 trillion for state and local governments, billions more for testing and contact tracing, as well as billions to put money in the pockets of Americans through direct payments, extended unemployment insurance, small-business loans and other initiatives.

Risky business

The debates around the country over when and how to ease stay-at-home orders is more granular and nuanced than the protests at state capitols and conflicts with police would first suggest, writes Newsday's Yancey Roy. It’s not a clear-cut liberal/conservative divide with one side demanding a full reopening and the other wanting a hard lockdown.

National and statewide surveys show a majority of voters, Republicans and Democrats, are following social distancing rules and don’t want many of them relaxed. They oppose opening restaurants for eat-in dining and gyms. They wouldn’t be comfortable attending sporting events or shopping at retail stores.

“There’s no doubt a majority of people are in favor of being very careful,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion. “The folks protesting do not really represent a large group.”

There also are signs the pressure to reopen is building as more people approach an economic breaking point. “It’s one thing to stay afloat for a month. Staying afloat four or five months is another thing,” Miringoff said. But there could be a cost: Easing of social distancing guidelines — whether by government edict or individual decision — has led to new coronavirus flare-ups in the United States and abroad, The Washington Post reports.

Janison: Loose ends on Flynn

To Trump's delight, Attorney General William Barr moved last week to ditch the case against Michael Flynn, who'd pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. Neither Trump nor Congress addressed one glaring issue that is left unclear, writes Newsday's Dan Janison.

Flynn was working for foreign interests all through the 2016 presidential campaign, right up until his ill-fated appointment as the president's first national security adviser. There remains no full explanation of why his paid work for Turkey raised no concerns.

It was never a secret that Flynn fronted for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The day Trump was elected, Nov. 8, 2016, Flynn published an opinion piece hailing Erdogan as a great ally of the U.S. and calling for action against Erdogan's foe Fetulleh Gulen, a Muslim cleric living in Pennsylvania.

Curiously, earlier in 2016, Flynn was practically endorsing the faction of the Turkish military that tried to carry out a coup against Erdogan, who Flynn said then was trying to "move toward Islamism."

Obama: Trump's 'chaotic disaster'

Former President Barack Obama harshly criticized Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic as an “absolute chaotic disaster” during a conversation with ex-members of his administration, according to a recording obtained by Yahoo News.

Obama’s comments came during a Friday call with 3,000 members of the Obama Alumni Association, urging them to support presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

“What we’re fighting against is these long-term trends in which being selfish, being tribal, being divided, and seeing others as an enemy — that has become a stronger impulse in American life. And by the way, we’re seeing that internationally as well. It’s part of the reason why the response to this global crisis has been so anemic and spotty,” Obama told them. "It would have been bad even with the best of governments. It has been an absolute chaotic disaster when that mindset — of ‘what’s in it for me’ and ‘to heck with everybody else’ — when that mindset is operationalized in our government."

Obama also reacted to the Justice Department dropping its criminal case against Flynn, saying he worried that the “basic understanding of rule of law is at risk.”

More coronavirus news

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

What else is happening:

• Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer asked the Department of Veterans Affairs on Sunday to explain why it continues to use the Trump-touted drug hydroxychloroquine to treat coronavirus patients despite questions about its effectiveness and safety. The VA said it's letting providers and patients decide as permitted by FDA guidance. See Newsday's story by Michael O'Keeffe.
• Trump tweeted obsessively on Sunday — more than 100 times — revisiting the Russia investigation, accusing Obama of orchestrating “the biggest political crime in American history, by far!” He paused for a "HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!" message and to tout the reopening of his Los Angeles County golf course. "So great to see our Country starting to open up again!" he wrote.
• Mark Meadows, Trump's fourth chief of staff, is learning one of the most important lessons of the Trump White House: to stay in sync with the president's son-in-law Jared Kushner, who functions as an unofficial chief of staff, Politico reports.
• The Republican National Committee has asked the federal government to provide personal protective gear for political conventions this August, underscoring the challenges of staging the events during a pandemic, The Washington Post reports. The Republican Party has been more bullish about holding an in-person convention than Democrats, but officials in both parties are in discussions about scaled-back events.
• Trump's handling of the pandemic appears to be costing him support among older Americans, The New York Times writes.
• The nation's coronavirus death toll passed 80,000 on Sunday.