Trump administration at odds with itself, this time over source of coronavirus

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sounded happy the other day to link what he has called the "Wuhan virus" to a research lab in China. “There’s enormous evidence” of it, he said in a TV interview Sunday. But Pompeo acknowledged the scientific consensus that there is no indication of coronavirus being manmade or genetically modified. He also offered no evidence of any connection to a laboratory.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, supports no talk of a lab connection. “If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and what's out there now, [scientific evidence] is very, very strongly leaning toward ‘this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated,’ ” Fauci told National Geographic in an interview published Monday. He also dismissed the idea that coronavirus escaped from a lab after someone somehow allegedly found it in the wild and brought it there.

Fauci holds an edge over Pompeo when it comes to public credibility. Pompeo, a former congressman and CIA director who in his current job went along with President Donald Trump's pursuit of a Ukraine "investigation," now seeks to help prop up the president's coronavirus-blame campaign against Beijing. Fauci, meanwhile, has taken heat from Trump fans for supporting social distancing and for not promoting chloroquine for COVID-19 treatment.

In another administration, you could expect a president to try to reconcile such conflicting accounts. In this one, confusion is the status quo. Back when Trump cast doubt on intelligence reports of Russian election meddling, the White House did nothing about the issue. Open disagreements flared over how to push dictator Nicolás Maduro out of Venezuela; nothing happened there either.

Professional warnings of all kinds are issued and ignored in the White House. That's standard operating procedure.

Fauci is due to join Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other administration representatives in testifying before a GOP-run Senate committee next week. They are expected to discuss the salient national problem of how to reopen schools and businesses while minimizing health risks. Trump doesn't want his officials to face the Democratic-run House because he says those lawmakers will make him look bad.

Meanwhile, Trump awaits Senate confirmation of a new director of national intelligence, Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas), who appears more likely than his more seasoned predecessors to tell the election-preoccupied president what he wants to hear.

Last week, Ratcliffe took the unusual step of issuing a public statement acknowledging that officials continue to “rigorously examine” whether the coronavirus outbreak “began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan." If it's still an open question, though, why did Trump soon afterward refer to a "high degree of confidence" in the latter possibility? Don't expect these government officials to explain or harmonize messages or set facts straight in real time. That's just not how they roll at the White House.

By Dan Janison

dan.janison@newsday.comDanJanison

Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.