President Trump put Vice President Mike Pence in charge of coordinating efforts to address the new strain of coronavirus, seeking to reassure the nation as cases of the disease mounted worldwide and U.S. stock markets suffered major losses.
“He has got a certain talent for this,” Trump said of Pence during a press briefing Wednesday.
“I’m bringing together all the members of the coronavirus task force that you have established … My role will be to bring that team together,” Pence told the president.
Trump reportedly had been considering bringing in someone from outside the administration to serve as a “coronavirus czar.” He clarified at Wednesday’s press conference that the vice president “isn’t a czar” but that officials would be reporting to him.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar had said earlier in the day that he didn’t expect any leadership changes. Appearing alongside Trump at the event, Azar said that he remained the head of the administration’s coronavirus task force and that he “couldn’t be more delighted” that the president selected Pence to lead the overall government response. Azar and Pence have known each other for a long time.
Trump announced the decision to appoint Pence shortly after he returned from a state visit to India and following a slew of criticism from Democrats, and even some Republicans, who said that an outside official should be tapped to coordinate the different work underway. Lawmakers cited as an example the Obama administration’s response to Ebola, when the president appointed Ronald Klain, a Democratic strategist, to the role of “Ebola czar.”
House Democrats spent much of Wednesday tearing into Azar during two back-to-back committee hearings, saying officials weren’t adequately prepared to fight the virus and that the administration should be asking for more than the $2.5 billion the White House requested to fight the virus. They also pressed Azar to provide documentation showing where all of the funding would go.
During the Democratic presidential debate Tuesday night, the candidates slammed Trump for his actions, saying they would go much further if elected, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar said he should speak directly to the nation.
Trump stated during the press conference that he would be willing to sign a bill allowing for more funding, and Azar said the same throughout committee hearings on Wednesday, clarifying that the $2.5 billion request was a minimum request. Azar said the money would help to support states in tracing and testing people who might be sick, that it would go toward developing a vaccine, and toward stockpiling protective masks.
“We’ll take it,” Trump said of the possibility of Congress allocating more funding for coronavirus research. “If they want to do more, we’ll do more,” he added, noting that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the White House should be requesting $8.5 billion.
Earlier in the day, Democrats said the president caused confusion by some of the statements he made to reporters. For instance, he said a vaccine would come “soon,” but officials said the development would take between a year and a year and a half, not counting the amount of time it would take to manufacture millions of doses people could use. Trump also said that the virus would go away in April, once the temperature heats up. While officials said that was true of other viruses, they stressed it would be hard to predict when the new strain would go away.
Azar in committee hearings defended the president against attacks, saying the president’s role was “critical in keeping the public calm in this situation.”
Only 15 people have been infected with the coronavirus in the United States, and officials have said that the risk to most people remains low. But after the virus started to spread in other countries, it became more clear that it would be difficult to stop. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned that the virus will spread in the U.S. and could cause massive disruption.
Trump, for his part, tried to temper fears during his press conference.
“The risk to the American people remains very low,” he said. “We have the greatest experts really in the world right here … we are ready to adapt, and we are ready to do whatever we have to as the disease spreads, if it spreads.”
