President Donald Trump's "low risk" admonitions to those wary of the coronavirus are leading his critics to suggest his mismanagement has helped fuel the crisis.
"The boss has made it clear, he likes to see his people fight, and he wants the news to be good," a source told Politico. "This is the world he's made."
The problem is those critics are past and present Trump administration officials, too, according to the report, which interviewed 13 officials who say Trump leans on advice that tells him what he wants to hear.
"If this sort of dysfunction exists as part of the everyday operations — then, yes, during a true crisis, the problems are magnified and exacerbated," a former Trump Health and Human Services official told Politico. "And with extremely detrimental consequences."
Dissension that unravels in the Trump administration might be a result of many opposing forces working not against each other but against the top.
"Every office has office politics — even the Oval Office," a source told Politico. "You'd hope we could wait to work it out until after a public health emergency."
Trump's aides have "mocked and belittled" HHS Secretary Alex Azar as an "alarmist" over the coronavirus, per the report, citing three unnamed officials.
"Because he feels pretty insecure, about the feuds within his department and the desire to please the president, I don't know if he was in the position to deliver the message that the president didn't want to hear," a former official who worked with Azar told Politico.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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