Trump's election challenges distracted from covid response, White House adviser told colleagues

[brooklynite]

Source: Washington Post

White House officials prioritized President Donald Trump’s attempt to challenge the election over the pandemic response last winter, according to emails obtained by the House select subcommittee probing the government’s coronavirus response and shared with The Washington Post.

Steven Hatfill, a virologist who advised White House trade director Peter Navarro and said he was intimately involved in the pandemic response, repeatedly described in the emails how “election stuff” took precedence over coronavirus, even as the outbreak surged to more than 250,000 new coronavirus cases per day in January.

“Now with the elections so close, COVID is taking a back-seat, yet the disease is rearing it[s] ugly head again,” Hatfill wrote to an outside colleague in October 2020. Following the election, which was disputed by former president Donald Trump, Hatfill wrote in another email that he personally “shifted over to the election fraud investigation in November.”

In other emails obtained by the subcommittee, Hatfill further detailed his role in the White House’s election challenges, including traveling to Arizona in the wake of that state’s close election, passing along a “Plan B for Trump Legal Fight” and sharing debunked rumors of Joe Biden’s supposed family ties with a voting machine company.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/09/23/trump-election-challenge-covid-response/

[Grokenstein]

1. We needed a leader who could

campaign and chew gum at the same time.

Someone who could win a battle of wits with an umbrella or other inanimate objects.

[sakabatou]

2. How many times do we need to say it?! TFG cares about himself and no one else!