Today we are spotlighting two significant revelations that somehow escaped proper attention during our struggle to survive the deadly pandemic that has enveloped our planet.
The first revelation was gleaned because we could electronically eavesdrop on last week’s phone call between Vice President Mike Pence and Maryland’s Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, chair of the National Governors Association. It proved the Trump administration is finally doing more of what is needed to help states test for COVID-19. Just a couple of months too late.
The second revelation surfaced in yet another White House briefing room clash Wednesday. President Donald Trump vehemently complained that The Washington Post misquoted his director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in its story headlined: “Virus’s second wave is likely to be even more devastating, CDC chief warns.” (And we’ll get to that, soon enough.)
Revelation One: On Monday, Pence and Hogan had one of those political phone calls where one of them wants to talk bluntly, but tries to be at least semi-politically correct. Because he knows the internet has ears. Hogan wasn’t pleased that Pence’s White House Coronavirus Task Force just made a show of giving him a long list of laboratory facilities in his state where Marylanders could get COVID-19 tests processed. But most were federal facilities that had already told Hogan’s officials their facilities are off-limits to states.
“We’re very familiar with the laboratories in our state … We’re in contact with every one of them,” Hogan said, adding, “the majority … are actually federal laboratories … (and) military installations … So you might want to go back and … pull out the ones that we don’t actually have access to.”
But then came a dollop of good news: Dr. Deborah Birx, a famous face from Trump’s task force, said they had talked with the Defense Department. Now, she said, “there is a willingness there if they can help support the states.”
Too bad this became Trump policy on April 20. Too bad Team Trump wasn’t taking charge and coordinating all national testing, in all 50 states, back on Feb. 20. Or even March 20. How many million more tests might have been conducted by now? How many thousands of lives might have been saved?
Now think deeper: Why didn’t Trump-Pence establish a National COVID-19 Test Commission months ago to obtain and dispense testing kits in all states? Why didn’t that board assign for each governor a top official test coordinator? Also: why are you reading that here today — and not hearing it from Trump in February (when he was in his panic-induced state of denial?)
Revelation Two: On Wednesday, Trump devoted humongous time to attacking The Washington Post for “misquoting” CDC Director Robert Redfield. Of course Trump also called it “fake news.” But Trump doesn’t want to understand an essential truth of our news business — it’s really not different than any of his own myriad businesses: Sometimes people just make mistakes — even the best in the business.
Consider that you are a Post reporter or editor. The CDC director has just told your reporter this quote that became the second paragraph of Wednesday’s Post article: “There’s a possibility that the assault of that virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through.”
Rewind. Remember: “… a possibility … even more difficult …” Would you then feel comfortable topping that with an opening sentence reporting the CDC director as warning a second wave “will” (escalated from just a “possibility”) be “far more dire” (escalated from even more difficult”)? And a headline that then escalated the lead sentence’s “dire” to “devastating?”
Of course not. Yet, for the next two news cycles, the talking heads only mucked it up more. They emphasized the Post got the director’s quote right — with no mention that the Post then took that quote on a Trump-styled wild ride on the up-escalator. What we lacked were fact-finding journalists liberally acknowledging that this time Trump had a valid complaint — which he then fouled up (yet again) by accusing the Post of willful “fake news.”
As I have occasionally observed before, The New York Times and Washington Post are great newspapers, but not always good ones. And Wednesday, my former paper, the Post, had one of its off days. Even presidents can be expected to have them now and then. But it usually doesn’t become a great American problem — unless our incumbent panics and seems to be having his off days hourly. That could definitely make America grate again.
Martin Schram, an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service, is a veteran Washington journalist, author and TV documentary executive. Email: martin.schram@gmail.com.
