The president spent much of his day hosting conference calls with company executives, industry groups and others that he announced Tuesday as part of a hastily formed outside advisory council devoted to the issue.
Advisers said the effort was aimed at building national momentum to reopen much of the country’s economy by next month. Trump said guidelines for such an effort will be announced Thursday.
“Today, I spoke with the leaders of many of our nation’s most renowned companies and organizations on how to achieve the full resurgence of the American economy,” Trump told reporters at the daily coronavirus briefing in the Rose Garden on Wednesday evening. “. . . We want to get our country open again.”
But across the business world, there was private unhappiness with how the White House handled the announcement of the advisory council — which it has dubbed its “Great American Economic Revival Industry Groups” — and others warned that Trump’s goal of a May 1 reopening date for much of the country was unrealistic.
Many of the chief executives urged the White House to focus more on mass testing, according to several participants on the calls. Public health experts have argued that widespread testing is a key prerequisite to reopening the economy because it would determine who is infected and needs to be isolated, giving Americans greater confidence that they can safely return to work and public life.
Trump seemed to downplay the issue while speaking Wednesday in the Rose Garden.Trump says mass testing not needed to reopen the country“It’s not necessary, but it would be a good thing to have,” President Trump said of mass testing for coronavirus on April 9. (Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
“We have the best tests in the world,” Trump said. “And we will be working very much with the governors of the states. We want them to do it. . . . The states are much better equipped to do it.”
No, he’s not doing what needs to be done. The pandemic will go on much longer because of it. I think we’re gong to have to accept that and just hope the governors can mitigate it somewhat.
(And if we want to stay alive we might not want to travel to places like South Dakota — and maybe steer clear of anyone with South Dakota plates no matter where they are. And I say that with tremendous sorrow for good people of South Dakota who are trying to do the right thing and are being forced into this death cult by their Trump-loving moron of a Governor.)
Anyway, whether it’s a big thing or a small thing, they simply cannot do it right:
Some of the groups involved in the calls were notified in advance of Trump’s announcement, while others heard their names for the first time during the Rose Garden event Tuesday night.
“We got a note about a conference call, like you’d get an invite to a Zoom thing, a few lines in an email, and that was it. Then our CEO heard his name in the Rose Garden? What the [expletive]?” said one prominent Washington lobbyist for a leading global corporation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter. “My company is furious. How do you go from ‘Join us on a call’ to, ‘Well, you’re on our team?’”
How could they not get that simple thing right? What? Even my cat Mookie could have organized that better.
This tweet crystalizes it:
That’s the most depressing thing I’ve read all day. And I’ve read a lot of depressing things today.
We elected an inept, narcissistic con man to lead us. Surprisingly, it turns out that actually matters.