The Trump regime's official position is that every agency and their acting chiefs should take whatever steps necessary to protect Trump from bad headlines regarding the coronavirus, but they're privately pointing their fingers at one person who is allegedly responsible for their bad policy.
Politico reports that White House officials are blaming Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar as the man most directly responsible for the regime's bungled response to the virus.
Even as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention takes blame for testing delays that may have led to hundreds of Americans being infected with the coronavirus, officials inside the health agency and the White House are increasingly pointing the finger at one leader: Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who they say failed to coordinate the response, as agency chiefs waited for instructions that came too late and other deputies were largely cut out of the process. [...]
“This was a management failure,” said one administration official, charging that Azar didn’t adequately plan for a worst-case coronavirus scenario that’s grown more likely by the day — even though Azar touted his bona fides as a veteran of the George W. Bush administration, where he helped fight crises like SARS and an anthrax scare. "CDC and FDA should have been working hand in hand to get Plan B, Plan C and Plan D ready to go," the official said.
It may be true that Alex Azar has not handled the situation in the manner that he should have, but it's also true that everyone in the Trump regime is responsible for making it their highest priority to protect the delicate feelings of Dear Leader Trump.
Azar may not have acted in the way that he should, but it's likely that he was acting exactly as the White House wanted him to. Azar and other public health officials, I remind you, have been instructed to clear their public statements with the White House coronavirus task force; a committee that includes Larry fucking Kudlow. The task force is also being chaired by Mike Pence who, in Trump's own words, was appointed to the position because he had 'nothing else to do.'
Alex Azar has been a loyal lickspittle for Trump when testifying to Congressional Democrats so I certainly won't shed any tears if he's thrown under a bus, but they're all guilty. They're all incompentent.
Everyone who works with Trump is eventually humiliated.