The latest news out of the White House is incomprehensibly dire. Politico is reporting that Donald Trump is "reluctant" to give the COVID-19 pandemic an emergency designation, which would provide emergency funding to states and allow a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) response in affected areas, because Trump believes calling it an "emergency" would go against his prior insistence that the coronavirus outbreak was no worse than the yearly flu.
He doesn't want to declare the emergency, said a "Republican who speaks to Trump," because it "contradicts his message." Worse, still, is this news: The coronavirus task force now led by Vice President Mike Pence will be holding off on its own recommendation on whether to declare a national emergency. The reason? They’re waiting on Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.
According to a person "familiar" with the situation, the task force "will not give Trump its final verdict until Jared Kushner, the president’s senior adviser and husband to his daughter Ivanka, finishes his research and comes to a conclusion himself," Politico reports.
So the declaration of emergency allowing the response to an emerging and deadly pandemic will, if one comes at all, be on hold until Trump's son-in-law familiarizes himself with virus research, pandemic response protocols, and other applicable information so that he, himself, can make a decision based on his “research” rather than deferring to the government’s own assembled public health experts.
Upon which Trump may or may not do it anyway, because he believes it would "contradict" his message that his administration has the virus under control.
There are no words left to say.