President Donald Trump made clear in an all-caps stroke of midnight tweet he’s done with sacrificing the economy to save millions of lives.
“WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF,” Trump tweeted at 11:50 PM Sunday night.
Now reports from several news organizations are giving that disturbing tweet even more disturbing context.
“President Trump and some of his senior officials are losing patience with the doctors’ orders,” Axios reports. “Senior Trump officials, including the president himself, have only limited patience for keeping the economy shut down. They are watching stocks tumble and unemployment skyrocket.”
“At the end of the 15-day period, there will likely be a serious clash between the public health experts — who will almost certainly favor a longer period of nationwide social distancing and quarantining — versus the president and his economic and political aides, who are anxious to restart the economy.”
The New York Times adds that “at the White House, in recent days, there has been a growing sentiment that medical experts were allowed to set policy that has hurt the economy, and there has been a push to find ways to let people start returning to work. Some Republican lawmakers have also pleaded with the White House to find ways to restart the economy, as financial markets continue to slide and job losses for April could be in the millions.”
“President Donald Trump began talking privately late last week about reopening the nation, despite the swiftly rising number of coronavirus cases and against the advice of health professionals, because he’s worried about the economic damage from an extended shutdown,” Bloomberg News reports. “The president started talking about how to get people back to work around Thursday.”
“It’s likely the CDC guidelines would be relaxed rather than scrapped altogether, one person said.”
The Hill notes that Trump “last week brought former Council of Economic Advisers chief Kevin Hassett back on in an advisory role. Hassett has said the U.S. may have to consider sending people back to work at some point to avoid a Great Depression–like event.”