Meadows: We’ve Given Up On the Pandemic

Mark Meadows just doesn’t care anymore.Chris Kleponis – Pool Via Cnp/CNP via ZUMA

For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis, the election, and more, subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.Well, this explains a lot:
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has just made one of the most revealing comments to emerge from Trump’s inner circle about the president’s historic mishandling of the coronavirus crisis. On a Sunday political talk show, Meadows admitted that the federal government was not focusing on trying to control the pandemic.
“We’re not going to control the pandemic,” he told Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union. “We are going to control the fact that we get a vaccine, therapeutics and other mitigation.” Tapper pressed Meadows to explain why the administration was not going to control Covid-19, given the massive surge that is pummeling the Midwest and mountain states. He replied: “Because it is a contagious virus.”
I mean, we all knew they’d given up, but I hardly expected them to just admit it on national TV. It doesn’t seem like a good reelection strategy, does it? I suppose they consider this some kind of sneaky 11th-dimensional chess or something, far beyond the comprehension of mere mortals like you and me.