Wednesday, March 11, 2020

121,098/4366. >1000 cases in USA – 29 deaths (WHO numbers). Congressional House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Reform Hearing today – Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) Chair AMAZING DAY!! Before Hearing we were told that the POTUS wanted me at the White House at 12:30 PM for a meeting about travel restrictions that we had been discussing and the Hearing was supposed to end at 12;30PM .. I obviously had to leave at 11:45 AM. I left. The chair and committee was very annoyed. The twitter feed blasted that since I was being very forceful in saying that :”Things were going to get worse before they got better” and gave a very serious warning about what was ahead, that the POTUS yanked me out of the hearing (Amazing).. Multiple TV cameras and hundreds of camera clicks followed me out of the Rayburn Building as I had a car waiting for me to take me to the Oval Office. The days discussions were historic. I, Bob Redfield, Deb Birx and Azar argued and discussed for a couple of hours that we should retrict all travel from the Schengen countries (the 26 European countries) similar to what we did with China (see above). USCITS can come back but will be funneled through 1 of 13 airports and when they get here, they must self isolate fo 14 days. Non-USCITs can only come if they had spent the last 14 days outside of the Schengen. Reason was that 70% of all new global infections were in Europe (particularly Italy and France) and 30 of the 35 US States had infections that originated in Europe. Level 3 travel to Europe – only essential travel Steve Mnuchin and Larry Kudlow were against this since they felt it would cause a depression, not just a recession. We went back and forth multiple times. Jared Kushner and Bob O’Brien (NSC) weighed in with me and Bob/Deb. We went in and presented to the POTUS and he asked good questions, many of them to me. He agreed and was clearly concerned more about the health of the American people than he was about the economy, which he said would recover. We then went and asked the opinion of the CEOs of the major banks who were waiting for POTUS in the Cabinet room. We did not them what we had alredy decide, but we asked them what they thought about travel restrictions. They were favorably disposed. Speech written mainly by Steve Miller with help from Jared Kuschner. I helped in reviewing of the Speech which the POTUS gave at 9:00 PM from the Oval. POTUS writers took out some good stuff that I wanted in and kept in some stuff I did not like. However, in all it was a good speech. The VP and I called Pelosi, Schumer, Mitch McConnel, and Kevin McCarthy to give them a heads up After I went home and watched on TV, the CNN commentators (Chris Cuomo, Anderson Cooper, David Gergon, David Gregory) all discussed me as the adult in the room and the person wew should all trust. Finally, Nancy Pelosi called me at home and was enraged and yelled at me for about 25 minutes saying that we left out the UK because of Trumps relationship with Boris Johnson. She is completely incorrect. UKwas not part of Schengen. She did not care. She said that I have lost all of my credibility now by saying that I said this was a public health decision when it really was a political decision. Terrible phone call!!! I called up Olivia Troye (Assistant to VP) after the call and explained. We will try to address this tomorrow. Probably should get Steve Beigen (State) to explain Schengen to her. PRESS: WTOP Radio; Clips of me all over all the news on multiple networks/cable.

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