White house internal phone numbers1/3/2023 Only a small group gets to know before it becomes public. They give whoever has them an advantage in shaping, and potentially winning, the day's internal debates. But these kinds of numbers are their own currency. Everyone wants to hear the headline number as well as Rouse's analysis.Staffers knowingly chuckle as Klain delays, administration officials tell Axios.But, beyond a tight circle, she’s sworn to silence until 8:30. Why it matters: Rouse sees the Consumer Price Index numbers the night before. But on certain mornings - like today - when big economic data is set for public release, Klain stalls for 10 minutes before calling on Council of Economic Advisers chair Cecilia Rouse. Whatever illness I’d brought into the building would’ve already been in the air.It's become an inside joke in the inner circle of the Biden White House: Chief of staff Ron Klain gathers senior staff daily for an 8:20am ET video call. After my visit in August, I wrote that if I’d torn off my mask and had a coughing fit inside the White House, it didn’t seem like anyone would’ve especially cared. Unless and until the White House starts taking this pandemic much more seriously, anyone visiting the grounds is at risk. Today it was a press aide who tested positive, along with a group of journalists. Yesterday came news that Trump’s senior adviser Hope Hicks was ill. More people at the White House are getting infected, as Meadows predicted this morning they would. A former administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to be frank, told me he’s worried that he’s been exposed and plans to get tested. Inside the building, the atmosphere seemed tense. #WHITE HOUSE INTERNAL PHONE NUMBERS TV#“In true fashion,” Meadows said, his boss was probably watching TV and “critiquing the way that I’m answering these questions.” When CNN’s Jim Acosta asked him why he wasn’t wearing a mask, Meadows trotted out the same tired defense that the White House deployed from the start: He gets tested regularly.īut, of course, so does Trump. Meadows spoke vaguely about “protocols in place” to keep everyone healthy. He opened not by talking about the shattering revelation that the 45th president of the United States is infected, but by touting monthly job numbers that might prove helpful to Trump’s reelection. In a seven-minute appearance, the barefaced Meadows efficiently demonstrated so much of what’s gone wrong with the White House’s handling of the pandemic. When White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows spoke with reporters on the north driveway this morning, he didn’t wear one at all. When a reporter suggested that he set an example for the nation, he put one on. Kudlow said he wanted to make sure the press could hear him while he kept his distance, and so he hadn’t worn a mask. But a senior White House official told the Associated Press this afternoon that masks amount to a “personal choice.” Larry Kudlow, the president’s top economic adviser, was effectively goaded into wearing one during an impromptu press conference today. On this day, of all days, a mask would have seemed indispensable. Graham: Trump’s denial has now produced what he feared During my August trip, none of the aides breathing the same air in this cramped warren of offices had seen fit to wear one.ĭavid A. Officials don’t appear to have learned much from the nightmare.Īs far as I could tell, the White House’s lone concession to the catastrophe unfolding before our eyes was that a few junior aides working in the suite of offices accessible to the press corps sat at their desks in masks. When Trump walked deliberately toward Marine One tonight, in a dark suit and matching mask, he waved to reporters who all day had been trying to find out information about his condition.īut he left a White House that, even though he’s been stricken with a potentially fatal disease, seemed no safer than at any other point in the pandemic. And yet, there’s no sign of a real course correction: The practices today seemed every bit as lax. Trump’s illness seems an outgrowth of the administration’s flagrant disregard for public-health precautions. I’ve written twice in recent months about the dangerous conditions around the president-about lax testing of journalists flying with him on Air Force One, about troubling working arrangements inside the executive mansion itself. Instead, I was simply searched for weapons and allowed in. The ritual was the same today: I showed up hours after we’d learned that President Donald Trump had tested positive for the coronavirus, yet no one asked about my health. When I visited the White House in August, no one checked to see if I was running a fever or suppressing a hacking cough as I passed through the security booth. They huddled privately with one another and didn’t wear masks. On the White House grounds this morning, senior West Wing aides walked around without masks.
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