The Daily 202: As 2,798 Americans die, Trump’s ‘most important speech’ makes only passing reference to pandemic

For context, about 2,750 people were killed at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, including the passengers and crew of the two hijacked airliners that crashed into the towers.

Trump made only a passing reference to the contagion in his rant, which he delivered straight to camera and without an audience.

“Using the pandemic as a pretext, Democrat politicians and judges drastically changed election procedures just months, and in some cases, weeks before the election,” Trump grumbled. “They used the pandemic, sometimes referred to as the China virus, where it originated, as an excuse to mail out tens of millions of ballots, which ultimately led to a big part of the fraud, a fraud that the whole world is watching, and there is no one happier right now than China. … It is important for Americans to understand that these destructive changes to our election laws were not a necessary response to the pandemic. The pandemic simply gave the Democrats an excuse to do what they have been trying to do for many, many years.”

He provided no evidence to support this provocative claim before moving on to proffer even more bizarre conspiracy theories and call on the Supreme Court to intervene and declare him the winner.

Meanwhile, CDC Director Bob Redfield told reporters that this winter could be “the most difficult time in the public health history of this nation” and warned that the covid death toll in the U.S. could reach 450,000 by February. 

As of this morning, at least 273,000 people have died of covid in the United States since February. The CDC’s National Ensemble Forecast, which aggregates models from 37 groups, projects that by the end of December, the overall U.S. death toll from covid could reach 303,000 on the low end and 329,000 on the high end.

In secret reports, the White House coronavirus task force warned governors this week that “the COVID risk to all Americans is at a historic high” and said virus-mitigation efforts in many states are still not strong enough, according to the Center for Public Integrity. “Forty-seven states and the District of Columbia were in the red zone for new cases in this week’s report.”

Trump no longer attends task force meetings. He did, though, tweet 23 times on Wednesday. But not one of his posts was about the coronavirus.

Former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, who was demoted in July, said the president could have won if he had expressed more empathy about the pandemic. “We lost suburban families,” Parscale said Tuesday on Fox News. “I think that goes to one thing: the decision on covid to go for opening the economy versus public empathy. … I think if he had been publicly empathetic, he would have won.”

It was Parscale’s first interview since his wife called police in September to say he was armed and threatening to hurt himself. He said Trump has not spoken to him recently and described their falling out as “pretty hurtful.”

Trump accepts none of the blame for the botched pandemic, but he is eager to claim all the credit he can. A reporter asked White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Wednesday about the United Kingdom approving the vaccine developed by Pfizer. “It’s the Trump vaccine,” she responded.

As Philip Bump notes, “The idea that the vaccine’s development and deployment was solely a function of Trump is ridiculous. Pfizer, for example, declined a federal investment in the development of its vaccine, its CEO said in September, to avoid being mired in political disputes.”

McEnany’s husband, baseball pitcher Sean Gilmartin, watched Wednesday’s briefing from the back of the press room as his wife also insisted that the White House has always followed the science. Yet illustrating how the White House has not been enforcing CDC guidelines, Gilmartin generated headlines by declining to wear a mask during the briefing. He even refused after being politely asked to do so by a photographer for the New York Times.

Privately, Trump expressed anger that Britain approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine first, according to two White House officials, even though an FDA advisory committee is expected to meet on Dec. 10 and a final decision by the agency to authorize its use on this side of the pond could come soon after that. “His chief of staff, Mark Meadows, met twice this week with FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn to discuss how the vaccine process could be sped up in the United States. Hahn’s job is said to be in jeopardy over his failure to further accelerate approval of the vaccine,” William Booth, Karla Adam, Laurie McGinley and Jose Del Real report.

While Trump expounded on his meritless claims about fraud, which have been rejected by several of his own judicial nominees, former presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton each volunteered to get the new vaccine publicly to reassure Americans that it is safe. Obama, in an interview that aired today with SiriusXM host Joe Madison, said that if Tony Fauci says a vaccine is safe, he will believe him. “I promise you that when it’s been made [available] for people who are less at risk, I will be taking it,” Obama said. “I may end up taking it on TV or having it filmed, just so that people know that I trust this science.”

“As President-elect Joe Biden makes fighting the raging coronavirus his most-urgent mission when he takes office next month, two figures already playing central roles in his transition are emerging as the most likely officials to preside over the new White House’s pandemic response,” Amy Goldstein and Toluse Olorunnipa report. “One contender for Biden’s coronavirus coordinator, envisioned as a powerful role in setting the agenda and orchestrating the work of federal agencies, is Jeff Zients, a co-chairman of the Biden transition team who led the Obama administration’s National Economic Council. Another is Vivek H. Murthy, a co-chair of the transition’s covid-19 advisory board and a former U.S. surgeon general.

“Within Biden’s camp, the thinking appears to be evolving as to who should lead the Department of Health and Human Services, a sprawling department with moving parts crucial to bringing the pandemic under control. Murthy has been considered for that role, while New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D), had been considered a leading candidate although she is said to be out of the running. … The Biden team offered her the role of interior department secretary, but she declined.”

During a virtual roundtable in Wilmington, Del., on Wednesday with a group of Americans who have experienced economic hardships because of the pandemic, Biden encouraged vigilance and offered reassurance. “Help is on the way,” he said.

This massive concession is meant to prod Trump and Senate Republicans into accepting a compromise. “Wednesday’s announcement by [Nancy] Pelosi and [Chuck] Schumer appeared to be the first time that leaders from one party agreed to back a proposal that had substantial support of members of the other party. And the willingness to accept a potential bill totaling less than $1 trillion represents a significant step-down for the top Democrats, who had pushed for more than $3 trillion in new aid,” Mike DeBonis, Jeff Stein and Seung Min Kim report. “Aides to senators hammering out the bipartisan, $908 billion framework have been in contact with Biden’s staff … although the president-elect has been careful not to weigh in too heavily publicly, considering Trump is ultimately the one who will sign any relief package this year. … Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), one of [Mitch] McConnell’s top deputies, suggested that the Republican-only plan — which administration officials say Trump will sign — could be merged with the bipartisan framework. ‘They’ve gotten reasonable,’ Thune said of Democratic leaders.”

• Hiring slowed in November as cases surged. ADP Research Institute said only 307,000 workers were added to private payrolls, missing the benchmark that analysts had expected. The Labor Department will release its monthly unemployment report on Friday. (Hamza Shaban)
• Insurance companies have started wrestling with whether to sell new policies to people who have recovered from covid-19. Application forms now specifically ask people trying to get coverage if they have had the virus. Millions of survivors are expected to be dealing with medical issues, including heart, kidney and lung damage, long after the pandemic subsides, and the long-term effects on mortality are unknown, even for those who had mild or asymptomatic cases. (Bloomberg)

“State Department leadership sent out a notice to employees one week ago recommending that ‘any non-mission critical events’ be changed to ‘virtual events as opposed to in-person gatherings.’ That same week, U.S. event planners were told that the guidance did not apply to the upcoming functions they were working on: large indoor holiday parties hosted by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his wife, Susan, on the eighth floor of the State Department involving hundreds of guests, food and drinks,” John Hudson reports.

• Austin Mayor Steve Adler (D) warned residents that they needed to “stay home.” He did so while vacationing in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. He also did so a day after he hosted an outdoor wedding and reception with 20 guests for his daughter at a hotel in downtown Austin. (Austin American Statesman)
• Police broke up a 400-person party at a Long Island mansion. The event was being held at a rented Airbnb, and the home’s owner called police after discovering the gathering while watching his security cameras from afar. (NYT)
• About 400 mostly maskless protesters stood shoulder to shoulder outside a Staten Island bar to demonstrate against New York’s restrictions and support a tavern that was forced to shut down for flouting those guidelines. (Timothy Bella)

D.C. Health Director LaQuandra Nesbitt said the city will receive an estimated 6,800 doses of the vaccine in its first shipment — less than one-tenth of what is needed to vaccinate 85,000 health-care workers here. Maryland’s first shipment will contain 150,000 doses, which will cover about half the state’s health-care workers. Virginia expects to get 70,000 doses by the end of this month, which Gov. Ralph Northam (D) said will fall short of what is needed for the highest-priority recipients. (Rebecca Tan, Erin Cox, Laura Vozzella and Michael Brice-Saddler)

• Employers are starting to prepare for the vaccine with two questions: Can we require it? And what should we do if employees resist? They are waiting for specific guidance from federal agencies, including the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and CDC, before setting corporate policies, employment lawyers say. (Jena McGregor)
• Tens of thousands of volunteers got placebo vaccines. Do they now deserve the real one? Some worry that “unblinding” the trials and giving vaccines to all of the volunteers would tarnish the long-term results. If all the volunteers who received placebo shots were to suddenly get vaccinated, scientists would no longer be able to compare the health of those who were vaccinated with those who were not. (NYT)
• As hospitals are overwhelmed, beds and space are less of a concern than workforce shortages. Executives worry that staffing levels won’t be able to keep pace with demand as front-line workers become exhausted or, worse, infected. (Kaiser Health News)
• Contradicting Gov. Larry Hogan (R), Maryland’s acting health secretary said that none of the 500,000 covid tests the state purchased from South Korea in April were used to diagnose whether people had the virus. Last month, Hogan insisted the tests had been used and “worked great.” But interviews and documents obtained by The Post have established that the governor was not telling the truth. (Steve Thompson)
• The Board of Supervisors in the rural Virginia county of Campbell passed a resolution rejecting the “tyranny” of Northam’s mask mandate and his order that restaurants stop serving alcohol after 10 p.m. About 100 people gathered to celebrate. (Greg Schneider)
• When California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced a statewide mask mandate in June, Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones (R) said he would not enforce the order. Now he has tested positive. (Jaclyn Peiser)

A senior administration official indicated that there is a chance the attorney general could be fired — not just for his public comments undercutting Trump’s unfounded fraud claims, but also for steps he did not take on a probe of the FBI’s 2016 investigation into Trump’s campaign. “The person said that several people are trying to persuade Trump not to do so,” Matt Zapotosky, Josh Dawsey and Devlin Barrett report. “Trump, the official said, was perhaps even angrier that Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham did not issue a public report of his findings before last month’s election, and that Barr had secretly appointed Durham as special counsel in October.” 

“Trump’s planned trip to Georgia on Saturday to campaign for two Senate candidates embroiled in tight runoff races has put some Republicans on edge that he could do more harm than good by repeating false claims about the voting system, attacking GOP officials and further inflaming a simmering civil war within the state party,” Dawsey, Amy Gardner and Cleve Wootson report. “The president, Republican advisers say, is key to convincing his die-hard supporters to vote for Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue in a lower-turnout special election that will determine which party controls the Senate for the next two years.”

• Perdue’s stock trades have far outpaced those of his Senate colleagues and have included a range of companies involved with industries overseen by committees he sits on. (NYT)
• Fox News will present a town hall tonight at 10 p.m. Eastern with Perdue and Gov. Brian Kemp (R). Moderated by anchor Laura Ingraham, the socially distanced event will take place live from Hill Aircraft in Atlanta.
• A Florida attorney is under investigation for registering to vote in Georgia for the Senate runoffs and encouraging other Republicans to do the same. (WSB-TV)
• Trump campaign lawyer Joseph DiGenova resigned from the elite Gridiron Club following an uproar over his comments suggesting that ousted cybersecurity chief Chris Krebs should be shot. (Elahe Izadi)
• Former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell led a rally in a northern Atlanta suburb Wednesday in which she exhorted hundreds of the president’s supporters not to participate in the Senate runoffs. (Phil Rucker)

“We’re not going to vote on your damn machines made in China,” Trump ally Lin Wood said at the rally, encouraging Republicans not to vote in the runoffs. “We’re going to vote on machines made in the USA!”

“They echoed calls by Gabriel Sterling, a top Republican election official in Georgia who on Tuesday urged Trump and other GOP politicians to tamp down their baseless claims of widespread fraud. In an impassioned statement, Sterling blamed the president for ‘inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence,’” Michelle Ye Hee Lee and Emma Brown report. “In Arizona, authorities are investigating calls for violence against the family and staff of Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D). In Vermont, state election officials received multiple voice mails Tuesday from an individual who urged violence against the staff — including execution by firing squad, according to the secretary of state’s office. … 

“Conservatives have also been targeted with threats. In Michigan, attorney Ian Northon, who represents the Thomas More Society, a conservative nonprofit that has filed lawsuits challenging the election results, said he had received threats and hateful emails. And Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) is investigating threats against members of the Wayne County canvassing board. … Amber McReynolds, chief executive of the National Vote at Home Institute, which works to expand vote-by-mail options, called Trump’s video address Wednesday ‘dangerous, destructive, and damaging to our democracy and our trust in elections.’ McReynolds, a former director of elections in Denver, was sent an image of a noose and a message calling her ‘a traitor’ via Twitter last week.”

“The Justice Department’s push to carry out executions during the run-up to Biden’s inauguration — including scheduling three during the week before he takes office — has drawn sharp condemnation from critics who denounced these actions during the lame-duck window,” Mark Berman and Zapotosky report. “‘It’s just unconscionable to move forward with executions at this point, in this situation,’ said Shawn Nolan, a lawyer for two of the federal death-row inmates facing execution. ‘Joe Biden ran on a platform of not moving forward with executions.'”

• Barr’s team published a rule last Friday, in a post-Thanksgiving news dump, that will allow federal inmates to be executed by electrocution, gas or firing squads in certain circumstances. The rule is set to take effect on Christmas Eve. (Zapotosky and Berman)
• Supreme Court justices spent 90 minutes in a teleconference hearing trying to hash out whether its ruling requiring unanimous juries in convictions for serious crimes should be applied retroactively. (Robert Barnes)

“In a series of interviews Wednesday, House and Senate Republicans made clear that the GOP has no intention of turning its back on Trumpism — or Trump himself. That’s in part because Trump remains an exceedingly popular figure in his party, far more than most congressional Republicans,” Politico reports.

• “If he were to run in 2024, I think he would be the nominee. And I would support him doing that,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.).
• “It’d be great if he ran. He’s done a good job. I think he ought to run if he wants to run,” said Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.).
• “I would encourage him to keep that option open. I would personally support him if he did,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
• Notably, two Republicans who have been laying the groundwork to run for president in 2024 pointedly declined to offer support for Trump: Sens. Tom Cotton (Ark.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.).

“Since Nov. 25, not a single fundraising email from the Trump campaign or its Republican National Committee fundraising account has featured Pence’s name in the ‘from’ field,” the Daily Beast notes. “And this week, that RNC joint fundraising committee … made another subtle change: a handful of its emails swapped out the official Trump-Pence campaign logo for one featuring just the president’s name. … According to four people with knowledge of the matter, [both changes] reflect an effort by the vice president and his team to distance Pence from some of the president’s more outlandish claims … ‘It is an open secret [in Trumpworld] that [Pence] absolutely does not feel the same way about the legal effort as President Trump does,’ said a senior administration official. ‘The vice president doesn’t want to go down with this ship.’”

The Republican National Committee invited 2024 hopefuls to a January meeting in a show of neutrality toward Trump. The list of would-be candidates invited to speak at a Florida meeting include South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley. Pence also plans to attend. (Politico)

“Trump is headed toward a veto showdown with Congress, as the White House doubles down on Trump’s promise to scuttle a $740 billion defense bill unless it opens the door for new, unrelated sanctions against Silicon Valley,” Karoun Demirjian and Tony Romm report. “With most leading Republicans and Democrats firmly united in their opposition to Trump’s demands, the president is waging an uphill battle that, if nobody blinks, could result in the first veto override of his presidency. … ‘[Section] 230 has nothing to do with the military,’ said Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), a Trump ally.” 

• The Taliban and Afghan government teams negotiating peace reached an agreement on a set of rules and procedures, a small but important step that will allow the two sides to move forward after months of inaction in their pursuit of a political settlement. (Susannah George)
• The U.S. will withdraw some staff from its Baghdad embassy as tensions with Iran spike. A person familiar with the withdrawal described it as a temporary “de-risking” that will continue after the Jan.  3 anniversary of the slaying of Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani. (Louisa Loveluck, Hudson and Carol Morello)
• The U.N. made an 11th-hour appeal to the Trump administration about the potential for humanitarian disaster in Yemen ahead of an expected decision by the president to name the Houthi rebels there as a terrorist organization. Meanwhile, U.S. officials are preparing to potentially halt a $700 million aid program for Yemen. (Missy Ryan and Hudson)
• Saudi Arabia and Qatar are close to a preliminary deal to end a lengthy rift, prodded by a Trump administration looking for some final “wins.” The tentative agreement doesn’t involve the three other countries that also severed diplomatic and trade ties with Qatar three years ago – the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt – but it would open air and land borders between the two regional rivals. (Bloomberg)
• Trump dropped his call for a 1 percent federal employee pay raise in January, advocating instead for a freeze on pay rates for all 2.1 million executive branch workers. (Eric Yoder) 
• The Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal watchdog, found a “substantial likelihood of wrongdoing” at the parent agency of the Voice of America under the leadership of Trump appointee Michael Pack. Since taking over the U.S. Agency for Global Media, Pack has turned it upside down, firing top leaders and directing investigations into journalists for perceived anti-Trump bias. (NPR)

A new court filing reveals that the president’s daughter was deposed on Tuesday by lawyers from the D.C. attorney general’s office, which has accused Trump’s 2017 inauguration committee of misusing donor funds, the AP reports: “As part of the suit, they have subpoenaed records from Ivanka Trump, first lady Melania Trump, Thomas Barrack Jr., a close friend of the president who chaired the inaugural committee, and others. Barrack was also deposed last month. Trump’s inaugural committee spent more than $1 million to book a ballroom at the Trump International Hotel in the nation’s capital as part of a scheme to ‘grossly overpay’ for party space and enrich the president’s own family in the process, the District of Columbia’s attorney general, Karl Racine, alleges.”

• The Senate is expected to confirm Chris Waller to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, in what could be Trump’s last addition to the central bank, as the more controversial nomination of Judy Shelton hangs in limbo. (Rachel Siegel)
• Biden has no plans to remove Chris Wray as FBI director if Trump does not fire him. The president-elect is expected to name his pick for CIA director soon. Former deputy director David Cohen is the leading choice. (NYT)
• Mark Kelly’s swearing-in means Arizona has two Democratic senators for the first time since 1953. (Felicia Sonmez)

“When Biden is inaugurated on Jan. 20, he is likely to take on the nation’s immigration policies almost immediately. It could be a difficult task: The new president will have to navigate between the expectations of supporters who demand a total repudiation of Trump’s restrictive policies and the complex realities of a dysfunctional immigration system,” Nick Miroff, Maria Sacchetti, Abigail Hauslohner and Arelis Hernández report. “Biden has pledged to stop work on Trump’s border wall, to change the nation’s approach to immigration enforcement and to again welcome refugees seeking protection from oppression. But experts warn that some shifts could take time amid bureaucratic overhauls and staffing concerns, and it is likely that any new wave of immigration to the U.S. southern border would provide an early test of the Biden administration’s approach to an issue that has been central to Trump’s presidency.” 

• Biden will be able to eliminate some of Trump’s hardline policies with the stroke of a pen. Others are regulations that would likely take months to change. A more lasting solution — immigration legislation passed by Congress — will almost certainly not materialize if Democrats are unable to win the Senate seats in Georgia. The incoming president is expected to rely heavily on executive authority. (Miroff and Sacchetti)
• Unraveling the programs, regulations and rules designed to shut out asylum seekers will be a major policy challenge for Biden. It probably will require recalibrating a federal apparatus that has been used during the past four years to try to stop the majority of immigrants from entering the country. Trump’s asylum policies, including the Migrant Protection Protocols program, have left roughly 25,000 people marooned across Mexico. Rescinding it would probably mean allowing them into the United States for their hearings. (Hernández and Kevin Sieff)
• The economies of Central American nations have been hammered by the pandemic and several powerful hurricanes, and experts expect more migrant caravans to arrive at the border. “Biden will not have an easy set of choices, but I think he will try to thread the needle between a more humanitarian approach and a need to avoid getting overwhelmed,” said Earl Anthony Wayne, who served as U.S. ambassador to Mexico under Obama. (Sieff and Miroff)
• Trump’s border wall, meanwhile, faces an uncertain future. The structure will remain unfinished when he leaves office, and Biden has promised to stop construction after he’s inaugurated. (Miroff)
• Undoing the results of Trump’s “Muslim ban” could take years. Biden has promised he will do away with the ban within his first 100 days in office, but immigration lawyers and advocates estimate that tens of thousands of people have had their visa applications denied outright or sit idle for months or years in a bureaucratic purgatory known as “administrative processing,” meaning it will take more than a stroke of the pen for the policy shift to yield actual travel visas for people hoping to come to America. (Hauslohner)
• The Obama administration deported about 3 million people, prosecuted thousands who came into the nation illegally and expanded family detention after a major influx of Central Americans at the border. Biden has said he would govern differently from Obama, and he has acknowledged that deporting people who committed no crimes other than crossing the border was a “big mistake.” (Sacchetti)
• Biden has also vowed to immediately reinstate DACA – but he’s already facing opposition. Pushing a citizenship bill that would give permanent legal status to “Dreamers” – most of whom are now in their 20s – through a Republican-held Senate would be challenging. Biden’s opponents are using the federal courts to try to stop him from restoring the program. Attorneys general in Texas and several other states are urging a federal judge in the border city of Brownsville to declare DACA unlawful and clear the way for an “orderly wind down” during the next two years. (Sacchetti)
• Thousands of foreign doctors and nurses could surge into overwhelmed areas if Biden reverses Trump’s crackdown on certain visas – including 10,000 physicians who are living in the U.S. on H-1B visas that currently restrict where they can work – and who could lose their legal status if they fall ill. (Politico)

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) had this suggestion for a Biden administration: 

Four senators have also been astronauts: 

The White House press secretary lied about something that was easily fact-checked: 

Stephen Colbert said it looked like Trump barely understood what he was talking about during his rambling Facebook speech: 

Jimmy Kimmel has an idea to help keep the vaccine cold enough for distribution: