March 8, 2020

The Trump Administration’s Sunday Morning Coronavirus Messaging Was a Disaster

Really, Ben Carson?

Screenshot This Week/ABC

The coronavirus is a rapidly developing news story, so some of the content in this article might be out of date. Check out our most recent coverage of the coronavirus crisis, and subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.

Members of President Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force fanned out on the Sunday morning talk shows to deliver a message about the administration’s handling of COVID-19—only, it’s unclear what exactly that message is. Pressed by journalists to provide numbers and a plan, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and Surgeon General Jerome Adams deflected and stumbled, unwilling or unable to answer basic questions about the coronavirus response.

Carson refused to reveal any information about the plan for 3,500 people aboard the Grand Princess cruise ship scheduled to dock in Oakland, California, tomorrow. Aboard are two passengers and 19 crew members who have tested positive for the coronavirus. Pressed by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Carson said Trump had met with the CEOs of major cruise ship companies yesterday, and that they would be coming up with a plan “within 72 hours.” 

“The ship’s docking tomorrow,” Stephanopoulos said.

“The plan will be in place by that time, but I don’t want to preview the plan right now,” Carson said. He added that the information should come from a “solitary source,” especially when it “hasn’t been fully formulated.”

On Friday, after a tour of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Trump said that he would leave the decision of whether to allow passengers and crew off the ship to others, but that he would “rather have them stay on, personally.” “I like the numbers being where they are,” Trump said. “I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault.” Vice President Mike Pence has said that people aboard the ship who require quarantine and medical care would receive it.

Meanwhile on CNN, the surgeon general said that the coronavirus is “absolutely” spreading, urging people to wash their hands frequently, cover their coughs, avoid sick people, and stay home if they showed symptoms. He said people who are older or have medical conditions, who are most at risk for the virus, should be “extra cautious.”

But then Adams pivoted. “Speaking of being at risk, the president—he sleeps less than I do and he’s healthier than what I am,” he said. “So that’s the other reason this messaging is hard. Because there are 70 year olds who run marathons and are healthier than some 30 year olds.” (That is not the case with our 73-year-old president.)

Pressed by anchor Jake Tapper to give a rough number of how many people have been tested in the United States, Adams first deferred, saying the numbers were changing “minute by minute.” Then he referred Tapper to the CDC, which removed testing numbers from their website last week. Finally, he referenced comments by Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn, who said yesterday that 5,861 specimens had been tested. The actual number of people tested is lower, because each person requires between two and 20 specimens to be tested in order to confirm the diagnosis. 

Adams instead said that 75,000 tests were available right now, and “millions more” would be available by the end of the week.

“Facts over fear, Jake,” he concluded.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate