What a difference a month makes. In January, President Trump made the bold and tough decision to suspend travel from China after reports began to reveal the severity of the coronavirus outbreak there. For his efforts, he faced a barrage of criticism from leading Democrats and their mouthpieces in the media who labeled the ban extreme, premature, and (of course) racist.
While the administration was busy setting up a task force to assess and deal with the new risk, Democrats took time out from flogging their latest Russia conspiracy theory to criticize the lack of diversity in the experts Trump had chosen for the coronavirus group.
Now, as the coronavirus outbreak spreads to countries that exercised less foresight in clamping down on travel and other preventative measures than did the United States, the Democratic apparatus sees a political opportunity in anticipating a wider outbreak of the virus in the U.S. To that end, Democrats have now reversed course, hitting the administration for a lack of preparedness. Since all the other recent attempts to bring down Trump’s administration have crashed and burned so spectacularly, why not try to politicize a potential pandemic?
But this new, desperate strategy of a flailing Democratic establishment will also fail, for one very simple reason: The Trump message and record of putting America first is exactly what is needed in this time of crisis. The measures his administration has already taken put us in a much better position to deal with an international health crisis of this nature.
In retrospect, the early ban on travel from China may prove crucial if the U.S. is to avoid the widespread outbreak being experienced in other countries across the globe that did not put similar thought into aggressive containment. But even if “community transmission” becomes a reality here in the coming months, our nation is the best prepared in the world to handle such a public health threat, as a study from Johns Hopkins documented last October.
A big contributor to that high level of preparedness is the team that Trump has assembled. Dr. Robert Redfield, Trump’s choice to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has spent much of the last two years reorienting the CDC bureaucracy away from its traditional focus on politically correct posturing and internecine competition for disease-research funds. Instead, he has diverted it toward its mandate of putting measures in place to control diseases such as pandemic influenza. The October study by Johns Hopkins is a measure of his success and a hopeful indication of the CDC’s capacity to adapt to an ever-changing situation, should more widespread transmission of coronavirus affect the homeland.
That capacity was highlighted this week in the plan to provide an unprecedented number of testing kits to hospitals nationwide quickly to get ahead of the outbreak curve.
But Redfield still faces an entrenched and politicized public health bureaucracy at CDC, as indicated by the off-the-reservation comments of Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. (She is the sister of former Deputy Attorney General and Never Trumper Rod Rosenstein.) After her remarks indicating that an outbreak in the U.S. was inevitable and that we should be preparing for “severe disruptions” to everyday life, stocks took a nosedive for their worst week since the onset of the 2008 financial meltdown.
That explains Trump’s subsequent actions to get messaging under control and prevent panic by putting Vice President Mike Pence in charge of coordinating public comments. Even that decision was met with a miffed reaction from Dr. Anthony Fauci, another career public health bureaucrat heading the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases over at the NIH, who essentially told the press that he had been muzzled by the administration. (He subsequently walked this back.)
But despite the deep state efforts to undermine Trump, even at the risk of causing a public panic, the point stands that Trump’s America First policies have put the U.S. in a better position to cope with this crisis, including any unanticipated economic repercussions as a result of a coronavirus-related worldwide slowdown.
Think back for a moment to all the establishment hand-wringing about the potentially devastating consequences of Trump’s trade war with China — consequences that proved entirely unfounded. How wise our slow disengagement from our country’s longtime dependence on the Beijing regime seems now. How prescient will Trump’s actions seem to bring our supply chains back home, especially if things get worse in the coming months.
Once again, America First policies have triumphed over the naysayers.
Robert Wasinger served in senior advisory and liaison roles in President Trump’s campaign and transition team, after extensive experience on Capitol Hill.
