Reporters with the White House Press Corps pressed the Trump administration, via Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, on Tuesday on the question of shutting down the U.S. economy down in an effort to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
One reporter quoted Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neel Kashkari, who said that the economy could recover more successfully in the long run if it were to “lock down really hard” for the next four to six weeks. She asked if the administration was considering such a lockdown.
McEnany, quoting Dr. Anthony Fauci, said that a long lockdown would have negative consequences for public health.
Later, another reporter objected to McEnany’s statement that President Trump was doing all that he could to stop the spread of the disease.
“How can you say that you’re doing everything that you can possibly do [on coronavirus] … When you’ve declined to impose a national mask mandate, when you’re saying that you won’t shut down the entire country again?” he objected.
McEnany ignored the question about shutting down the economy, answering instead that “when we identify a problem, we quickly identify a solution.” She gave the example of innovations that have been used to increase the speed of coronavirus testing when there were earlier delays.
Democrats have claimed — belatedly — that they would have shut the economy down earlier, and would have kept it closed for longer, to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.