Trump,COVID-19,and the War on Expertise

Presidential Leadership and Expertise in Times of Crisis

In no other time is presidential leadership more important than in times of crisis. Presidents who have faced crisis have relied tremendously on expertise and advice from within the executive branch to navigate crisis situations. Abraham Lincoln, perhaps serving as the best example, exerted tremendous leadership in ushering the nation through the Civil War. Franklin Roosevelt promised the nation a New Deal in response to the Great Depression, and during his first 100 days in office ushered policy solutions through Congress at a tremendous pace to offset the economic downturn and suffering among the public. John Kennedy showed a steady hand of leadership through the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, navigating a tumultuous showdown with the Soviet Union over the presence of offensive weapons in Cuba. Each of these crises was navigated brilliantly by effective presidential leadership. However, each of them also did not lead alone. Instead, they surrounded themselves with capable advisors who would provide expertise that helped inform their responses to the crisis. Lincoln famously assembled a “team of rivals” to provide expertise in the critical battle to not only save the Union embroiled in Civil War but, further, to establish an agenda for lasting reform that would maintain it after reconstruction (Goodwin, 2005). Roosevelt, among all of his strengths, was perhaps strongest in his ability to “assemble and sustain a remarkably talented and staunchly loyal team that would remain together in the years ahead” (Goodwin, 2018, p. 66). John Kennedy similarly assembled a highly qualified team of Ivy League educated “whiz kids” that he relied heavily upon to navigate the Cuban Missile Crisis (Kennedy & Schlesinger, 2011). Many presidential decisions involve interactions with a small group of advisors. How the president manages his group of advisors has tremendous consequences on the ability to make decisions, especially during crisis. Decision-making in crisis situations takes place in the interaction between political and bureaucratic leaders to reach a collective decision (Boin et al., 2005; Hult & Walcott, 2009; Stern & Sundelius, 1997). Groups of advisors within which there is high conflict can foster both pressure to conform to the dangers of “groupthink” and/or allow decisions and pronouncements that have not been thoroughly vetted (Boin et al., 2005; Hult & Walcott, 2009).

Donald Trump’s management of the executive branch and his interaction with advisors has been unique in American history. Before even launching his campaign, Trump (2015) offered his hostility toward the administrative state, tweeting that “Bureaucratic red tape and overregulation are discouraging the American dream.” Trump continued this hostility with campaign promises of deregulation, elimination of administrative barriers to business interests, and promises to deconstruct the administrative state (Lipton & Applebaum, 2017; Rucker & Costa, 2017; Shafran & Rimes, in press). Such an approach was appealing to the Trump right-wing populist base that holds more authoritarian beliefs and breeds resentment toward intellectualism (Steger, in press). Attacks on the administrative state are not new, as they come directly out of the Republican playbook. However, Trump’s attacks on what he consistently refers to as the “deep state” are far more extreme and often arise from questionably credible sources advancing what could best be described as conspiracy theories (McIntire et al., 2019; Shafran & Rimes, in press). Particularly problematic has been Trump’s (2018) use of twitter to disparage the federal bureaucracy, spreading conspiracy theories about the “criminal deep state” plotting against him. Donald Trump’s skepticism and outright hostility toward the administrative state have left career bureaucrats demoralized, created record turnover rates in appointed positions (Tenpas, 2020), and caused a trend of expertise leaving the federal bureaucracy (Shafran & Rimes, in press). As the remainder of this article makes evident, Trump’s disposition and management of the administrative state have had tremendous implications for the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trump, COVID-19, and the War on Bureaucratic Expertise

Donald Trump’s hesitance to rely on or worse yet outright hostility toward bureaucratic expertise to combat the COVID-19 pandemic began long before the pandemic itself had started. President Barack Obama created the pandemic response office as part of the National Security Council (NSC) in 2016. National Security Advisor Jon Bolton, whom Trump appointed in April 2018, disbanded the pandemic response office as part of an effort to streamline NSC operations. The decision to disband the pandemic response team happened in spite of stringent objections from Luciana Borio, then director of the medical and biodefense preparedness team of the NSC, who claimed that a flu pandemic was the number one threat facing the nation’s health security. Borio, and many others with associated expertise in pandemic response, left the executive branch in the period immediately following the disbanding of the pandemic response office (Shesgreen, 2020). Disbanding the pandemic response team left the Trump Administration far less prepared to address the COVID-19 pandemic than it otherwise could have been.

Early responses to the COVID-19 pandemic indicate a similar pattern of discounting pandemic response experts. The World Health Organization (WHO) began publishing reports out of China in mid-January of 2020, along with blueprints from China on how to test for the virus. Although the signs were a bit unclear at this time regarding the potential for the outbreak to become a pandemic, President Trump downplayed the threat completely in his January 22nd comment to CNBC’s Joe Kernen (2020). Kernen asked Trump whether there was concern about a possible pandemic at this point. President Trump’s response was much more bold and optimistic than anything coming out of the WHO at the time. Trump responded to Kernen’s (2020) question by saying “No, not at all. And—we’re—we totally have it under control. It’s just one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” The following day, on January 23, the WHO declined to issue a global health emergency as a result of COVID-19 but did acknowledge the potential for the outbreak to become an emergency (WHO, 2020).

As the virus began spreading both within and outside of China, by the end of January, the WHO declared a global health emergency and urged countries to begin preparations for widespread availability of rapid testing (Perez-Pena & McNeil, 2020). On January 29, Dr. Mike Ryan, the head of the WHO’s Health Emergencies Program, stated that “The whole world needs to be on alert now. The whole world needs to take action and be ready for any cases that come from the epicenter” (Keith & Gharib, 2020). The following day, at a campaign rally in Iowa, President Trump stated that “We only have five people. Hopefully, everything’s going to be great. They have somewhat of a problem, but hopefully, it’s all going to be great” (Keith & Gharib, 2020).

Throughout the month of February, in spite of cases spreading rapidly outside of China and the alarm bells that were being sounded from the WHO, Trump continued to downplay the threat of the virus to the United States. In a February 2nd interview with Sean Hannity, President Trump stated that “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China” (Factbased Videos, 2020b; Keith & Gharib, 2020a). On February 13, in an interview on Fox News with Geraldo Rivera, President Trump said that “In our country, we only have, basically, 12 cases, and most of those people are recovering and some cases fully recovered. So it’s actually less” (Factbased Videos, 2020a; Keith & Gharib, 2020b). Trump also downplayed the threat posed by the virus on Twitter. On February 24, Trump (2020a) tweeted “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.” In standard outlets, President Trump took every opportunity to downplay the threat of the virus even as the news became more ominous from the WHO. In a February 26th news conference, President Trump stated “When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done” (Keith & Gharib, 2020). Again, a mere 2 days later, the WHO raised the global risk from coronavirus from high to very high (Keith & Gharib, 2020).

The warning signs that the threat of the pandemic was serious for the United States were plentiful and coming from many directions. It was revealed in April that President Trump was being warned by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), in the agency’s President’s Daily Brief (PDB), that the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic could be cataclysmic in the United States. These warnings began in November 2019 (Margolin & Meek, 2020). President Trump missed the warnings from the CIA, however, because he routinely skips reading the PDB and shows little patience for having the briefs read to him orally even twice per week (G. Miller & Nakashima, 2020). Even Trump’s economic advisor Peter Navarro prepared memos warning of the dire consequences of a potential COVID-19 outbreak, which were ignored by Trump. Beginning in January, Navarro began sending warnings throughout the White House that the coronavirus had the potential to kill half a million Americans and exact an economic cost in excess of US$6 trillion (Swan & Talev, 2020). Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar warned President Trump during a call on January 30 of the possibility of a pandemic. Trump responded to his staff that Azar was being an alarmist (Litpon et al., 2020).

In perhaps the starkest example of a war on expertise, Trump expressed a desire to fire the top expert from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on viral respiratory diseases, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, after she held a late February conference call with reporters and spoke frankly on the need for the American public to be prepared for a serious disruption to their lives. Following that call, the military’s National Center for Medical Intelligence raised their warning level inside of the federal government, concluding that a global pandemic was imminent (Goodman & Schulkin, 2020). Messonier’s story is not alone. There was also a documented effort on the part of the Trump administration as of late February to continue to downplay the threat to the American public, as many of Trump’s closest advisors were careful about public messaging in the last few days of February. Dr. Anthony Fauci, appearing on NBC’s Today Show and in spite of the alarms being raised in the West Wing, stated that “there’s no need to change anything that you’re doing on a day-to-day basis. Right now the risk is still low” (Goodman & Schulkin, 2020). At the same time, in late February, Defense Secretary Mark Esper spoke to the military and instructed them to take measures to protect their personnel from the virus while being careful to not “run afoul of President Trump’s messaging” (Goodman & Schulkin, 2020). These examples indicate that late in February, advisors were sounding alarms from experts throughout the executive branch, yet there was a notable culture of fear being perpetuated by Trump to control the messaging that would be made available to the public.

Secretary Azar finally announced in February that the government aimed to establish surveillance, based on increased testing, to track the spread of the virus through American communities. However, testing availability fell far short of these aims due to the delayed response of the Trump Administration. Testing was only discussed at the end of very contentious meetings for about 10 min, reflecting that it was clearly not a priority of the administration. One administration official equated the lack of testing availability to track the spread of the virus to “flying the plane with no instruments” (Shear et al., 2020).

In spite of various warnings coming from the health policy community of experts, intelligence agencies, economic council, and the CDC, President Trump was not only downplaying the threat to the United States as detailed above. He was also very slow to institute any actions or policy responses. Although Wuhan, China, was the epicenter of the virus, President Trump did not issue a travel ban on China until January 31. Waiting even longer, Trump’s European travel ban did not come until 6 weeks later (Rubin, 2020), long after the virus had spread into European countries. His downplaying of the threat also continued into March, stating in a Fox News town hall that “It’s going to all work out. Everybody has to be calm. It’s all going to work out” (White House, 2020b). In a meeting on Capitol Hill with Senate Republicans on March 10, Trump said “This was unexpected . . . And we’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm, and it will go away” (White House, 2020a). These comments again came just before an announcement to the contrary by the WHO. On March 11, the WHO officially characterized COVID-19 as a pandemic (Keith & Gharib, 2020).

Thus far, Trump’s dismissal of the public health community of expertise has been aimed mostly at downplaying (or in some cases completely ignoring) the threat presented by the coronavirus to the United States. He did so in spite of numerous warnings from the WHO documented above as well as an obvious spread in the numbers globally. The delayed response ultimately went against recommendations and, as we explore below, crippled the United States in terms of preparedness to deal with the coming pandemic. In the paragraphs that follow, it is clear that Trump’s hostility toward expertise was kicked into overdrive once the crisis was no longer deniable.

Finally, on March 16, President Trump ordered significant steps to slow the spread of coronavirus in the United States. Trump recommended that students do schooling at home and people who can work from home do so, while avoiding public gatherings of 10 or more people (White House, 2020c). As of March 16, when these initial steps were taken to slow the spread, there were already 4,500 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the United States. It is at this point that Trump’s tone began to change. Trump told reporters on March 17 that the outbreak was a pandemic and that he felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic (Rogers, 2020a). This brazenly ignores over a month of downplaying the spread of COVID-19 and painting a positive portrait of preparedness, even at times deferring to an apparent magic conception that the virus will just disappear.

Perhaps Trump’s most aggressive front in the war on expertise came in his decision to aggressively pitch treatment for the symptoms of COVID-19. Usually, treatments have to undergo many rounds of testing, clinical trials, and controlled experiments. Trump’s response to COVID-19 did not reflect the patience for science to be executed safely and on its own time line. On March 21, President Trump (2020b) tweeted “HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine. The FDA has moved mountains—Thank You!” Minutes later, dozens of doctors responded to the tweet to dispel the notion that the treatment was safe. One such doctor is Eugene Gu (2020), who tweeted

The combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin to treat the coronavirus has not been proven safe and effective through large scale clinical trials. There is only anecdotal evidence from case reports in countries overseas. Promising them as miracle drugs gives false hope.

Whistleblower testimony from Rick Bright, a vaccine expert within the Trump Administration who was demoted, claims his demotion was the result of a continuous set of warnings he issued to administration officials including President Trump. Bright served as the Director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority but was removed according to the Whistleblower claim because he “prioritized science and safety over political expediency” (Abutaleb & McGinley, 2020). In his testimony before Congress regarding his whistleblower complaint, Bright claims that he was demoted because he criticized the preparedness and supply shortages available for first responders, President Trump’s consistent championing of unproven treatments for COVID-19, and the pedaling of optimism regarding rapid development of a vaccine (Blake, 2020).

President Trump’s state of mind regarding the pandemic clearly began to unravel after the March 16 admission that the virus was indeed a pandemic. Following his impatience with the possibility of scientific advancements to assist in the treatment of those infected with the virus, he began to show impatience with social distancing as well. Only 1 week after recognizing the COVID-19 spread as a pandemic and putting in place measures to stop the spread, on March 24, Trump signaled to the nation that he felt the virus could be gone by Easter. In spite of CDC and WHO recommendations to continue aggressive tactics for social distancing, Trump told Fox News journalist Bill Hemmer “Easter is a very special day for me . . . Easter Sunday, and you’ll have packed churches all over our country” (Rupar, 2020). On April 6, in part due to the impatience being shown by Donald Trump, Dr. Mike Ryan of the WHO’s Health Emergencies Program urged for patience and caution in ending the shutdown (Keith & Gharib, 2020).

In early April, perhaps in realization that his lofty Easter goal would not be met, Trump started to show signs of transitioning from impatience with the scientific community to anger toward it. Trump took to Twitter again, this time in criticism of the WHO. Trump (2020c) tweeted “The WHO really blew it. For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China centric. We will be giving that a good look.” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was asked the next day by a reporter to respond to Trump’s criticism. He responded by asking the president “Please don’t politicize the virus,” adding that “the focus of all political parties should be to save their people” (Chappell, 2020). This exchange is a little more than a month after tweeting on February 24 that the “World Health have been working hard and very smart” (Trump, 2020a). Expanding the conflict to unprecedented levels, Trump instructed his administration to halt funding to the WHO in the midst of a global pandemic on April 14 (Wamsley, 2020).

Easter came and went without the desired grand reopening, and the impatience from President Trump was increasing because of the economic decline resulting from the government shutdown. As Alex Azar had warned as early as January, there has been a severe economic contraction. Analysts at Goldman Sachs are predicting that unemployment in the United States could reach as high as 25% in the first quarter of 2020, with GDP falling 39% (Hansen, 2020). Trump aides and allies began a serious push for the President to push states to open for business as quickly as possible to enhance his chances at reelection in November (Kumar, 2020). The President chose to push states to open the economy, even going so far as to encourage protests in several states where Democratic Governors have been slower to open their states (Shear & Mervosh, 2020). The pressure to reopen has led to Congressional hearings, with Anthony Fauci being a witness in high demand. President Trump denied Fauci from appearing before the Democratic controlled House to testify but allowed him to testify before the Republican controlled Senate.

Fauci testified before the Senate and issued grim warnings about the prospects of reopening the economies of the states. Testifying before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Fauci stated that

My concern that if some areas—cities, states or what have you—jump over those various checkpoints and prematurely open up, without having the capability of being able to respond effectively and efficiently, my concern is we will start to see little spikes that might turn into outbreaks. (Herb & Fox, 2020)

He later added that

There is a real risk that you will trigger an outbreak that you may not be able to control, which in fact, paradoxically, will set you back, not only leading to some suffering and death that could be avoided but could even set you back on the road to try to get economic recovery. (Herb & Fox, 2020)

Fauci also expressed hesitance to have children return to schools due to the potential unknown effects that the virus could have on children. President Trump was highly critical of Fauci following his testimony, arguing that his answers were “unacceptable, especially when it comes to schools” and later adding that Fauci “likes to play both sides of the equation” (Rogers, 2020b). This was but the latest clash between Trump and Fauci. President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have been pressuring the intelligence community to push the narrative that the COVID-19 virus was made in a lab in China (Wadhams et al., 2020), something that Dr. Fauci resoundingly discredited as false in an interview with National Geographic (Akpan & Jaggard, 2020).

At the time of this writing, the President continues to pressure states to reopen their economies. The reopening guidelines issued by the CDC have been the subject of political modification and according to reports have been watered down by the Trump Administration (Roubein, 2020). Trump’s focus on quick economic recovery by reopening does not reflect current consumer confidence to spend in retail (R. Miller, 2020) and proceeds ahead in spite of grim projections circulating within the White House that the resulting death toll is expected to increase 70% by June 1 (“Models Project Sharp Rise in Deaths as States Reopen,” 2020).

Conclusion

Before Donald Trump even began his campaign for the presidency, he began running against the administrative state. He campaigned as someone who would slash regulations and act as an agent of disruption toward the bureaucracy. In doing so, Trump ran the risk of eliminating important administrative expertise to help manage crisis. Trump’s disposition toward the executive branch has led to lower morale and mass departures among civil servants as well as a fear to go against the political pressures imposed by the Trump orthodoxy. None of this penchant for outright dismissal of expertise nor destruction of the administrative state has changed even in the face of crisis, contrary to his predecessors such as George W. Bush who have risen to the occasion in spite of their similar antipathy toward the administrative state (Edwards, 2003). Donald Trump’s continued aversion to council and expertise has had tremendous impact on the federal government’s response to COVID-19. The cost, unfortunately, is measured in a loss of American lives that over a 2-month period has surpassed the number of deaths resulting from nearly two decades of war in Vietnam.