Crisis troubleshooter?????

Trump’s crisis troubleshooter preps for his toughest test yet

The striking contrast between Trump and Pence, playing out in public and in private, is now set for a new act as the pair attempts to engineer a difficult reopening of the U.S. economy.

By GABBY ORR

On an afternoon in late February, hours after stepping off an overnight flight from India, President Donald Trump huddled with senior aides in the Oval Office to discuss a coronavirus outbreak that was spreading within the U.S. and wrecking a stock-market boom. Trump wanted someone else to steer the administration’s public health response if the virus hit the U.S. hard, but he was unimpressed with the names his aides were tossing out.

As they ticked through potential candidates, Trump settled on an easier solution: Mike Pence. The vice president had earned his trust long ago, and was a welcomed choice by aides who thought he would elevate the effort and score points for political accountability.

“He’s got a certain talent for this,” Trump said of Pence at a news conference that evening, announcing he would now lead the administration’s fight against Covid-19.

Seven weeks into his post, and a month into a shutdown of much of the U.S. economy, Pence is emerging as a jack of all trades for the many facets of Trump’s crisis. When the cameras are on, he is Trump’s hype-man extraordinaire — artfully affixing compliments of his boss to otherwise mundane statements, or casting the president as the real architect of the government’s coronavirus response. When they are off, he is the administration’s key conduit to senators, governors, Cabinet secretaries and disease experts — many of whom interact with him or his staff in daily Situation Room meetings, or through phone calls and text messages.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, said Pence has called her “on a number of occasions out of the blue” to check in or follow up on the state’s allotment of medical supplies from the strategic national stockpile.

“He’s very cordial and has been very accessible, and has helped me get things for Michigan that we desperately needed,” she said in an interview.

The truest test of Pence’s approach will occur in the coming weeks, as he and Trump attempt an orderly reopening of the U.S. economy — one that will require extensive cooperation across all levels of government and industry — without triggering a second viral outbreak months before the November election.

Behind the scenes, Pence has kept a close eye on nearly every internal function linked to the administration’s Covid-19 response. He consults with White House senior adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner several times each day, monitoring his efforts to partner with private sector companies and address supply chain issues across the country.

He bookends his daily schedule with phone calls to the president, and often briefs Trump in the executive dining room during the middle of the day.

And up until this week, when Trump’s newest chief of staff Mark Meadows added a trio of new faces to the White House press shop, Pence put his barebones communications staff — plus a few detailees from other executive departments — in charge of all coronavirus-related inquiries.

“The task force runs through the vice president’s office. That is the central nervous system of this effort; the president made it that way,” said White House counselor Kellyanne Conway.

In many ways, Trump’s No. 2 has been primed for this moment. Pence witnessed two chiefs of staff try — and miserably fail — to micromanage the president, and had a front-row seat to the impeachment trial that unfolded after the president’s third chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, gave him free reign.

Out of the ashes of their strategies, Pence has developed his own plan for managing the government’s Covid-19 response: a way to bring order to the process in a long-disorderly environment, while yielding to Trump’s penchant for headline-grabbing moments conjured up by the president himself.

Conway said Pence — a former Indiana governor — is well-positioned for the task because he’s a “workhorse not a show horse,” and doesn’t mind ceding center stage. Trump has been known to complain about aides who take credit for positive developments within his administration, regardless of the degree of his involvement.

“Other people might bristle if they were not the star of the show… but the vice president looks at it in the exact opposite way,” she said, noting that Pence has been pleased with the ratings boost Trump’s attendance at the daily task force briefings has brought.

In recent days, Pence has personally encouraged Trump to continue appearing at coronavirus news conferences, indulging the president’s desire to remain in the spotlight even after some Republican allies suggested his unbridled participation had become counterproductive. One of those critics, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, was at the center of speculation earlier this year about whether Trump would replace Pence on his 2020 ticket, and is seen as a likely presidential contender herself in 2024, when Trump’s vice president is also expected to run.

“He needs to let his experts speak,” Haley told Fox News last week, adding that Trump shouldn’t “feel like he needs to answer everything” or let the briefings “be too long.”

On Monday, the task force held a two-and-a-half-hour briefing during which Trump played a controversial campaign-style video attacking the media. On numerous other occasions, the president has contradicted infectious disease experts who stood beside him on stage, sparred with reporters in the room, insulted governors who failed to demonstrate satisfactory appreciation for federal assistance and compared the novel coronavirus to the seasonal flu.

In just about every case, the vice president stood by silently as the president carried on.

Still, Pence “thinks it’s incredibly helpful to have the president there and there’s been a lot of people who’ve commented about their styles complementing one another,” said a senior White House official.

The briefings have offered a remarkably visual contrast between Trump, who routinely deviates from his prepared remarks and relishes the opportunity to punch back at his critics in front of millions of Americans each afternoon, and Pence, a more subdued figure who tends to use his time on the podium to discuss data, emphasize cooperation, express sympathy to victims and offer gratitude to health care workers.

“Other than the incessant fawning, the @VP is a far better briefer than his boss. Tries to stick to facts,” David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, wrote on Twitter following a briefing last month by Trump and Pence.

Much like the impeachment trial earlier this year for the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against Ukraine, the coronavirus crisis has underscored how the president and Pence respond differently in pressure-packed moments — and why Trump often bears the brunt of close scrutiny.

Despite the fact that his own meetings with Ukrainian officials played a prominent role in the investigation, Pence emerged from the impeachment saga relatively unscathed by both defending the president and distancing himself from key players in the probe. Trump, on the other hand, weighed in on the investigation nearly every chance he could — berating witnesses on Twitter or using key diplomatic occasions, like his visit to Davos in January, to focus on his Senate trial back home — actions that stirred up further controversy and irritated some of his own allies at the time.

Earlier this week, Trump created an additional fire for his aides to put out by claiming he could assert “total” authority over America’s governors to reopen businesses and send Americans back to work — a point Pence was forced to defend despite his own strongly stated views on the subject.

So far, though, Trump has seemed pleased with Pence’s approach to the virus and to the administration’s daily response. On multiple occasions, and without prompt, he has praised his vice president from the briefing room podium and noted how little sleep Pence must be getting these days.

“We’re not getting any calls from governors at this moment… they’re in great shape for this surge that’s coming in certain areas. You’ve done a good job on that, Mike. Really, a great job. I appreciate it, the whole country appreciates it,” Trump said on Good Friday.

Despite Pence’s efforts to coordinate with state leaders, including a dozen group calls with governors and personalized outreach on weekends, he’s made no effort to block Trump from having his own conversations with state and local officials. Whitmer said she’s also spoken with the president one-on-one, but found her conversations with Pence to be “much more in-depth.”

Trump has periodically joined the conference calls and task force meetings hosted by Pence, and the duo and their wives conducted a call with mental health professionals last week to discuss the impact of Covid-19.

When the Senate was ironing out the details of an economic stimulus package late last month, Trump remarked to aides how impressed he was with Pence’s simultaneous leadership of the task force and involvement on Capitol Hill. Around the same time, Trump mentioned his “great” friendship with Pence during a televised town hall on Fox News.

In many ways, the manner in which Pence has steered the White House through the coronavirus outbreak — letting Trump occupy the spotlight while he exerts tight control over the government’s response — is only something he could pull off.

Few others in Trump’s orbit have demonstrated the level of fealty Pence has shown since taking office alongside his famously mercurial boss, and virtually no one has proven more adept at being Trump’s explainer than his own vice president.

“Mike was able to speak for five minutes and not even touch your question,” Trump recently said to a reporter, saluting his vice president’s prevarication.

The next day, Trump asked an aide if they had seen the clip of Pence artfully dodging the reporter’s question. The vice president never does that to him, Trump joked.