How Trump's "Deep State" Myth Left US Unprepared for a Pandemic
Steve Bannon with Donald Trump in the White House, January 2017.
In the early days of the Trump administration, reports abounded of the desire by those now in charge to undo the “deep state.” Presidential advisor Steve Bannon in particular was an outspoken fan not only of deregulation, but of actually dismantling aspects of the US government. Every day, he claimed, “would be a battle for deconstruction of the administrative state.” This was not simply a determination to reduce the size and scope of the federal government and its seemingly extravagant public spending, which amounted to a hefty $3.85 trillion in fiscal year 2016. It also reflected a suspicion of the very value of a core function of a career state bureaucracy in a liberal democracy, which is to provide advice and informed guidance to the changing political guard.
Hollowing Out
As George Packer has illustrated, the President’s personal frustration with career professionals manifested itself in very public tirades against the activities of the FBI, the Justice Department and the State Department. At one press briefing, Trump referred to Secretary Pompeo as heading the “Deep State Department.” Away from the public eye, other federal agencies found themselves being reorganized in ways that many employees found unacceptable. In May 2019 the Washington Post reported that many had left the Economic Research Service and the National Institute for Food and Agriculture over plans to relocate the agencies despite warnings that such a move would diminish their operational capacity. The same newspaper also reported that in the opening 18 months of Trump’s presidency the Environmental Protection Agency had lost a net of approximately 1200 workers, or 8% of its workforce.
This hollowing out of the EPA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture reflected a distaste for the manner in which these agencies could impose extra costs on business through their oversight functions. The disdain for these agencies was seen in some of the early appointments to key positions at the USDA, with knowledge of the farming industry not required. Similarly, the nomination of former Texas Governor, Rick Perry, to be Secretary of Energy suggested that this department was likely to take a light touch to its regulatory role given how Perry had previously called for the department’s abolition. As Michael Lewis notes in his analysis, the type of risk associated with ignoring experts on subjects such as climate or nutrition mostly involves downstream effects, likely to manifest themselves when someone else holds political power and so complicating the question of blame for negative consequences.
Previous Administrations
That neglect of apparently distant risk, however, proved calamitous when Covid-19 appeared. Unsurprisingly President Trump claims to have acted perfectly and has blamed the lack of preparedness to deal with the virus on previous administrations. The evidence, however, does not support this interpretation of events. It would be silly to expect any government to have an extensive off the shelf tool kit to deal with the particularities of Covid-19, but it is important to recognize that both the Bush and Obama administrations had taken the threat of pandemic seriously and had made some planning for such a catastrophe. Perhaps inevitably, both administrations faced criticism for being underprepared and ridicule for catastrophizing.
However imperfect these plans were, they existed but the Trump administration downsized these efforts rather than built on them.
Back in 2005, apparently after reading a book on the 1918 Spanish influenza, President George W. Bush called for a $7 billion national pandemic strategy. This was met with inevitable doubt at a time when the nation faced so many other challenges, but in this instance, the president was listening to the experts. “If we wait for a pandemic to appear,” Bush stated, “it will be too late.”
In addition, other warning shots were being fired from a range of sources for years before Covid-19 struck. In 2012, the Rand Corporation’s survey of international threats reported that pandemics were what were “capable of destroying America’s way of life.” Two years later, the Obama administration faced its own health security crisis, this time in the form of the lethal Ebola virus. As the threat loomed in late 2014, the president appointed Ron Klain as Ebola Czar to oversee the management of this major international challenge. At the time, alongside his social media disapproval of the Center for Disease Control (CDC), Donald Trump also shared his criticism of the Klein appointment. “Do we need more people? Do we need more bureaucracy?” he tweeted.
Trump’s Response
As President, Donald Trump’s disparaging approach to “bureaucracy” remained undiminished. Stories of his disinterest in a 2016 transition team have been widely shared, along with tales of his desire for unyielding loyalty from staff and a disdain for science and experts. (See for example Michael Lewis, Michael Wolff, James Comey). As documented by public finance expert Linda Bilmes, CDC was a target for cuts in the administration’s proposed budgets.
This might explain, to some extent at least, why the CDC appeared slow in its response to the 2020 Covid-19 outbreak on American soil. It is clear that the Center was not in a position to move swiftly from normal peacetime operations to something resembling wartime requirements. One veteran employee with 27 years of experience voiced his incredulity at the fact that offers by CDC laboratorians to use their facilities for Covid–19 testing were rejected by CDC administrators.
Furthermore, despite the fact that the specific threat was flagged up by the Chinese on December 31 2019 to the WHO China County Office, and that four weeks later, a memo sent from trade advisor Peter Navarro to the President and National Security Council warned that “the lack of immune protection or an existing cure or vaccine would leave Americans defenceless in the face of a full blown coronavirus outbreak on US soil,” President Trump’s public utterances on the matter remained upbeat. One presidential tweet, dated February 24, stated “the coronavirus is very much under control in the USA…Stock market starting to look very good to me.” By the time the Trump administration awoke to the reality of what a pro-active pandemic response required, the nation had the most cases of the disease worldwide.
In late March 2020, Politco reported that the Obama administration left a “playbook” for its successors in order to provide continuity and share experience. However, those in the Trump circle did not display a desire to engage with planning for a rainy day. The PREDICT project, a $200 million (spent over five years) early warning programme for disease detection, ran out of funding in September 2019. PREDICT has been described as the “smoke alarm” for pandemics, partnering with sixty foreign laboratories in order to detect viruses with potential global threats. The PREDICT price-tag offers a prescient instance of ‘administrative state” expenditure that transcends the daily running of the country. Perhaps it offers an example of the type of entity that Steve Bannon wished to do “battle” with. As the US, along with much of the globe, remains obliged to exist in a state of lockdown with an as-yet unknown human and economic cost, that $40 million a year smoke alarm outlay would have been public money well spent.
Clodagh Harrington (De Montfort University), Alex Waddan (University of Leicester)