\n\n\u201cThe briefing was intended to hammer home a new, terrifying reality facing the Trump administration, and the incoming president\u2019s responsibility to protect Americans amid a crisis. But unlike the coronavirus pandemic currently ravaging the globe, this 2017 crisis didn\u2019t really happen \u2014 it was among a handful of scenarios presented to Trump\u2019s top aides as part of a legally required transition exercise with members of the outgoing administration of Barack Obama.\u201d
\u2026
\u201cThe Trump team was told it could face specific challenges, such as shortages of ventilators, anti-viral drugs and other medical essentials, and that having a coordinated, unified national response was \u201cparamount\u201d \u2014 warnings that seem eerily prescient given the ongoing coronavirus crisis.\u201d
\u2026
\u201cBut roughly two-thirds of the Trump representatives in that room are no longer serving in the administration. That extraordinary turnover in the months and years that followed is likely one reason his administration has struggled to handle the very real pandemic it faces now, former Obama administration officials said.\u201d
\u2026
\u201cObama aides, in op-eds and essays ripping the Trump administration\u2019s handling of the coronavirus, officially called COVID-19, have pointed to the Jan. 13, 2017, session as a key example of their effort to press the importance of pandemic preparedness to their successors.In a Friday op-ed, Susan Rice, Obama\u2019s national security adviser, blasted Trump for comments such as \u201cyou can never really think\u201d that a pandemic like the coronavirus \u201cis going to happen.\u201d She mentioned the 2017 session as one of many instances of the Obama administration\u2019s efforts to help its successor be ready for such a challenge. She also slammed the Trump team for dismantling the National Security Council section that would play a lead role in organizing the U.S. response to a global pandemic.\u201d
\u2026
\u201cLisa Monaco, Obama\u2019s homeland security adviser, explained the thinking behind the January 2017 session in a recent essay for Foreign Affairs. \u201cAlthough the exercise was required, the specific scenarios we chose were not,\u201d she wrote. \u201cWe included a pandemic scenario because I believed then, and I have warned since, that emerging infectious disease was likely to pose one of the gravest risks for the new administration.\u201d\u201d
\u2026
\u201cThe Trump campaign, like the rest of America, was shocked to win the November 2016 election. Soon afterward, Trump cast aside his team\u2019s transition prep work that had happened already and started over; some of his aides described tossing carefully collected binders full of possible personnel picks into trash bins. It was days, sometimes weeks, before his nominees and their aides showed up to meet the people they were replacing \u2014 if they did so at all \u2014 or to engage in transition meetings. Obama aides said they left detailed memos for their successors, but that quite often it appeared those memos were never read. Many on the Obama side were genuinely surprised that so many actually showed up for the Jan. 13, 2017, exercise, and there were expectations that some would skip it. On the Obama side, several agencies were represented by their second-in-command at the meeting for reasons including a belief that Trump\u2019s principals wouldn\u2019t show.The gathering was held to satisfy a requirement in a 2016 law that updated the procedures around presidential transitions to require, among other things, that the outgoing administration \u201cprepare and host interagency emergency preparedness and response exercises.\u201d Obama also mentioned it in a 2016 executive order laying out his transition goals.\u201d
\u2026
\u201csome Obama aides who attended said they were left with the impression that many of the Trump aides showed up to simply check off a box more than to learn. The impression was boosted in part because the transition overall was going so poorly. Several Trump nominees had barely even spoken to their Obama counterparts.\u201d
\u2026
\u201c\u201cThe problem is that they came in very arrogant and convinced that they knew more than the outgoing administration \u2014 full swagger,\u201d one former Obama administration official who attended said.\u201d
\u2026
\u201cAsked whether information about the pandemic exercise reached the president-elect, a former senior Trump administration official who attended the meeting couldn\u2019t say for sure but noted that it wasn\u2019t \u201cthe kind of thing that really interested the president very much.\u201d \u201cHe was never interested in things that might happen. He\u2019s totally focused on the stock market, the economy and always bashing his predecessor and giving him no credit,\u201d the person said. \u201cThe possibility things were things he didn\u2019t spend much time on or show much interest in.\u201cEven though we would put time on the schedule for things like that, if they happened at all, they would be very, very brief,\u201d the former official continued. \u201cTo get the president to be focused on something like this would be quite hard.\u201d Anything associated with Obama or his administration was also a no-go zone for Trump aides. If you brought them up, \u201cthat would be an immediate rejection, like, \u2018Why are they even here? Why the fuck did you ask them?\u2019\u201d\u201d
https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2020\/03\/16\/trump-inauguration-warning-scenario-pandemic-132797\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cThe briefing was intended to hammer home a new, terrifying reality facing the Trump administration, and the incoming president\u2019s responsibility to protect Americans amid a crisis. But unlike the coronavirus pandemic currently ravaging the globe, this 2017 crisis didn\u2019t really happen \u2014 it was among a handful of scenarios presented to Trump\u2019s top aides as part of a legally required transition exercise with members of the outgoing administration of Barack Obama.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Trump team was told it could face specific challenges, such as shortages of ventilators, anti-viral drugs and other medical essentials, and that having a coordinated, unified national response was \u201cparamount\u201d \u2014 warnings that seem eerily prescient given the ongoing coronavirus crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cBut roughly two-thirds of the Trump representatives in that room are no longer serving in the administration. That extraordinary turnover in the months and years that followed is likely one reason his administration has struggled to handle the very real pandemic it faces now, former Obama administration officials said.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cObama aides, in op-eds and essays ripping the Trump administration\u2019s handling of the coronavirus, officially called COVID-19, have pointed to the Jan. 13, 2017, session as a key example of their effort to press the importance of pandemic preparedness to their successors.
\nIn a Friday op-ed, Susan Rice, Obama\u2019s national security adviser, blasted Trump for comments such as \u201cyou can never really think\u201d that a pandemic like the coronavirus \u201cis going to happen.\u201d She mentioned the 2017 session as one of many instances of the Obama administration\u2019s efforts to help its successor be ready for such a challenge. She also slammed the Trump team for dismantling the National Security Council section that would play a lead role in organizing the U.S. response to a global pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cLisa Monaco, Obama\u2019s homeland security adviser, explained the thinking behind the January 2017 session in a recent essay for Foreign Affairs. \u201cAlthough the exercise was required, the specific scenarios we chose were not,\u201d she wrote. \u201cWe included a pandemic scenario because I believed then, and I have warned since, that emerging infectious disease was likely to pose one of the gravest risks for the new administration.\u201d\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Trump campaign, like the rest of America, was shocked to win the November 2016 election. Soon afterward, Trump cast aside his team\u2019s transition prep work that had happened already and started over; some of his aides described tossing carefully collected binders full of possible personnel picks into trash bins. It was days, sometimes weeks, before his nominees and their aides showed up to meet the people they were replacing \u2014 if they did so at all \u2014 or to engage in transition meetings. Obama aides said they left detailed memos for their successors, but that quite often it appeared those memos were never read. Many on the Obama side were genuinely surprised that so many actually showed up for the Jan. 13, 2017, exercise, and there were expectations that some would skip it. On the Obama side, several agencies were represented by their second-in-command at the meeting for reasons including a belief that Trump\u2019s principals wouldn\u2019t show.
\nThe gathering was held to satisfy a requirement in a 2016 law that updated the procedures around presidential transitions to require, among other things, that the outgoing administration \u201cprepare and host interagency emergency preparedness and response exercises.\u201d Obama also mentioned it in a 2016 executive order laying out his transition goals.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201csome Obama aides who attended said they were left with the impression that many of the Trump aides showed up to simply check off a box more than to learn. The impression was boosted in part because the transition overall was going so poorly. Several Trump nominees had barely even spoken to their Obama counterparts.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201c\u201cThe problem is that they came in very arrogant and convinced that they knew more than the outgoing administration \u2014 full swagger,\u201d one former Obama administration official who attended said.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cAsked whether information about the pandemic exercise reached the president-elect, a former senior Trump administration official who attended the meeting couldn\u2019t say for sure but noted that it wasn\u2019t \u201cthe kind of thing that really interested the president very much.\u201d
\n\u201cHe was never interested in things that might happen. He\u2019s totally focused on the stock market, the economy and always bashing his predecessor and giving him no credit,\u201d the person said. \u201cThe possibility things were things he didn\u2019t spend much time on or show much interest in.
\n\u201cEven though we would put time on the schedule for things like that, if they happened at all, they would be very, very brief,\u201d the former official continued. \u201cTo get the president to be focused on something like this would be quite hard.\u201d
\nAnything associated with Obama or his administration was also a no-go zone for Trump aides. If you brought them up, \u201cthat would be an immediate rejection, like, \u2018Why are they even here? Why the fuck did you ask them?\u2019\u201d\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[409,221,556,540,170,496],"class_list":["post-2367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-coronavirus","tag-donald-trump","tag-obama","tag-pandemic","tag-trump","tag-virus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2367"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2368,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2367\/revisions\/2368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}