A report issued Friday by the House Oversight Committee asserts that “the Trump administration’s persistent political interference in the pandemic response contributed to one of the worst failures of leadership in American history.”
The committee – which is helmed by Democrats – found that the Trump administration:
- blocked officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from making media appearances
- sidelined the CDC when it came to finalizing pandemic guidance
- intentionally watered down testing recommendations in order “to obscure how rapidly the virus was spreading across the country”
- instructed career scientists to destroy evidence of political interference in pandemic policy
- pressured the Food and Drug Administration to authorize “ineffective coronavirus treatments, such as hydroxychloroquine”
- championed herd immunity over the objections of top government doctors
- used personal email accounts to conduct official business
- prioritized Trump’s re-election bid over sound public health initiatives
The 46-page report also found that the Trump administration’s incompetence “left the federal government vulnerable to fraud and profiteering.” One event-planning company that received a $31.5 million federal contract to distribute food boxes, for instance, consistently “paid farmers and producers up to ten times the price those same producers would normally receive from grocery stores.”
In addition, the committee uncovered evidence that Trump’s Occupational Health and Safety Administration was reluctant to impose regulations on meatpacking companies. That failure to impose safeguards turned meatpacking facilities into COVID-19 “hotspots,” where infections were routinely undercounted.
The report was based on a review of hundreds of thousands of documents. Ten interviews with top officials in the Trump administration were conducted. Many of the most startling revelations came from Trump’s White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx. CNN reports:
[Birx] at one point was so upset about a meeting that included doctors whom she called part of a “fringe group” that she told colleagues she would not attend.
“I can’t be part of this with these people who believe in herd immunity,” Birx wrote in an email released by the committee. That approach has been widely decried by public health experts, who note that a previous infection doesn’t guarantee immunity and who say such an approach would most certainly have led to even more hospitalizations and deaths. “These are people who believe that all the curves are predetermined and mitigation is irrelevant — they are a fringe group without grounding in epidemics, public health or on the ground common sense experience. I am happy to go out of town or whatever gives the WH cover,” she wrote.
CNN adds:
Another official told the committee the CDC wanted to hold a briefing on the recommendation to wear cloth face masks and inform the public about pediatric cases and deaths from Covid-19 but the Trump administration blocked the request. The committee revealed in its report former CDC Principal Deputy Director Dr. Anne Schuchat said “many of us” in CDC felt they couldn’t speak out about the science of Covid-19 because, the report summarized, White House decisions were being driven by politics.
“Trump Administration officials engaged in a staggering pattern of political interference in the pandemic response and failed to heed early warnings about the looming crisis,” the committee summarized. “These decisions placed countless American lives at risk, undermined the nation’s public health institutions, and contributed to one of the worst failures of leadership in American history.”