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      The martyrdom of Mike Pence

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      After Donald Trump had exhausted all of his claims of voter fraud and could contrive no more conspiracy theories that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, and after his revolving menagerie of legal mouthpieces had all of their motions tossed out of every venue up to the supreme court, and after his reliable enabler, Attorney General William Barr, informed him his accusations were false and he had reached the end of the line, and resigned, Trump came as a last resort to rest his slipping hold on power on his most unwavering defender and ceaseless flatterer, who had never let him down: his vice-president, Mike Pence.
      Nobody was more responsible for fostering the cult of Trump. The evangelical Pence had been Trump’s rescuer, starting with his forgiveness for the miscreant in the crisis during the 2016 campaign over Trump’s Access Hollywood “grab them by the pussy” tape and then over the disclosure of the “Individual One” hush money payoff to a porn star about a one-night stand to shut her up before election day – AKA “the latest baseless allegations”. Pence was the indispensable retainer who delivered the evangelical base, transforming it through the alchemy of his faith into Trump’s rock of ages. After every malignant episode, from Charlottesville (“I stand with the president”) to coronavirus (“The president took another historic step”), the pious Pence could be counted on to bless Trump for his purity of heart and to shepherd the flock of true believers.
      “Trump’s got the populist nationalists,” Stephen Bannon, Trump’s pardoned former senior adviser, remarked. “But Pence is the base. Without Pence, you don’t win.”
      Withstanding the howling winds of narcissism, the unshakably self-abasing Pence upheld the cross over Trump. On the evening of 3 May 2017, Trump welcomed his evangelical advisory board for dinner in the Blue Room of the White House.
      “I’ve been with [Trump] alone in the room when the decisions are made,” Pence testified to the assembled pastors. “He and I have prayed together. This is somebody who shares our views, shares our values, shares our beliefs.”
      Nobody more than Pence had modeled adulation of Trump to become the standard for sycophantic imitation. At the first meeting of members of Trump’s cabinet, on 12 June 2017, the president called on each to offer praise.
      “I’m going to start with our vice-president. Where is our vice-president?” Trump asked. “We’ll start with Mike and then we’ll just go around, your name, your position.”
      “This is just the greatest privilege of my life,” Pence said, setting the tone for the others. More

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      To be Trump, or not: what Shakespeare tells us about the last five years

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      The time is out of joint. When lost for words, as many have been over the past five years, William Shakespeare is a useful go-to guy. His plays have helped us make sense of plague, political upheaval and a mad monarch, delivering soliloquies by tweet.
      “While maintaining his career as the most-produced playwright in the world, he is also moonlighting as the most-cited provider of metaphors for the Trump era – and particularly its denouement,” Jesse Green, the chief theater critic of the New York Times, observed last month. “Hardly a thumb-sucking political analysis goes by without allusion to one of the 37 canonical plays, however limited or far-fetched the comparison may be.”
      But as the dust settles on the Trump presidency, Green’s exhortation – brush down your Shakespeare, stop quoting him now – seems unlikely to gain much traction.
      Books have been written. Jeffrey Wilson, a Harvard academic, is the author of Shakespeare and Trump, published last year. The book’s cover features its title emblazoned on a red cap, in lieu of the words “Make America great again”, beneath a pair of donkey’s ears.
      “The thesis of the book is tragedy but we’ve got a little bit of comedy in there too,” Wilson says. “So the cover alludes to Shakespeare’s character Bottom, who’s this kind of huckster blowhard who gets his head turned into a donkey to symbolise the stupidity. Plus, Bottom’s just obsessed with building a wall in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
      Which other characters parallel Trump? “There’s going to be Julius Caesar, who thinks he’s a god over people, not one of them. There’s going to be Richard III, this power-hungry criminal whose clownishness seduces supporters. There’s going to be Macbeth, whose thirst for power is wrapped up in his fragile masculinity.
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      “There’s going to be Henry VI, this child king whose weak leadership creates this fractious counsellor infighting all around him. There’s going to be Angelo in Measure for Measure, a self-declared law-and-order guy who is himself a criminal. And there’s going to be King Lear, who so completely binds the personal and the political that the collapse of his government is also the collapse of his family.”
      When the pandemic finally ends and theatres spring back to life, that list will offer rich pickings to directors. There is a long tradition of holding up the mirror of Shakespeare to specific cultures, from Akira Kurosawa’s Throne Of Blood, The Bad Sleep Well and Ran to irreverent productions in South Africa that critiqued apartheid.
      Some are subtle, others on-the-nose. In 2017, the director Oskar Eustis’s production of Julius Caesar in New York’s Central Park depicted the eponymous character with blond hair and red tie. It all caused a brouhaha in conservative media: corporate sponsors pulled support, protesters stormed the stage and Eustis received death threats.
      Wilson reflects: “When I asked [Eustis], he insisted he wanted it to be a very blunt instrument. The fascinating thing for me about that production is that it may or may not have helped us better understand Donald Trump but it helped me better understand Julius Caesar as a text.
      “It allowed us to use Trump as a lens for understanding the way that Shakespeare wrote this play, which is so filled with comedy in the first half, the kind of outrageous, obnoxious, satirical comedy that is so associated with Trump. That’s how Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar should be performed.”
      The play, he says, “is drawing upon tropes of the 17th-century clown, the antichrist who comically comes on stage and thinks that he’s the most glorious thing ever invented and is revealed to be a total fraud.
      “You don’t really get that sense of Julius Caesar when you watch most Shakespearean stagings of the play but by using Trump as a lens to understand that, we can use the accessible emotions and knowledge that we have from current events to rethink how we should read this distant, old, obscure literature.”
      Wilson’s book also considers how America has seen Shakespeare in the age of Trump. A month after his victory in 2016, for example, students at the University of Pennsylvania took down a portrait of Shakespeare and replaced it with a photo of Audre Lorde, an African American writer, feminist and civil rights activist.
      Steve Bannon, who led Trump’s winning campaign and became a White House strategist, was previously a banker, media executive and Hollywood producer who in the 1990s co-wrote two Shakespearean adaptations: a Titus Andronicus set in space, complete with ectoplasmic sex, and a hip-hop Coriolanus, based in South-Central LA.
      The screenplays are not publicly available but Wilson tracked them down – and found an insidious racism. He writes: “Specifically, Bannon’s Coriolanus suggests that African Americans will kill themselves off through Black-on-Black crime, while his Andronicus tells the story of a ‘noble race’ eliminating its cultural enemies on the way to securing political power.”
      Wilson adds: “NowThis did a table read of Coriolanus and actors were just sprinting to get through the lines. One of them said, ‘It sounds like he’s never met a Black person in his life.’” More

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      Donald Trump's second impeachment: will the Senate convict him?

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      Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial begins in the Senate next week. Lawrence Douglas explains the process and politics of the spectacle ahead

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      The US Senate will be transformed into a courtroom next week when Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial begins. After hearing evidence against the former president, the Senate’s 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats will have to decide whether Trump was guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors” when he incited supporters to storm the Capitol building and disrupt the election certification process. Lawrence Douglas, an Amherst College professor and Guardian opinion contributor, explains what kind of defence Trump is planning to mount, and whether any Senate Republicans are likely to vote to convict him. And the former Democratic senator Russ Feingold, who served during Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial in the 90s, tells Anushka Asthana how the process has become more partisan than ever. Archive: CNN, C-Span, Rev, Bloomberg, CBS-DFW, Fox News, CBS, 60 Minutes (CBS), YouTube More

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      'A moral and national shame': Biden to launch taskforce to reunite families separated at border

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      Joe Biden plans to create a taskforce to reunify families separated at the US-Mexico border by the Trump administration, as part of a new series of immigration executive actions signed at an Oval Office ceremony on Tuesday.Biden condemned Donald Trump’s immigration policies as a “stain on the reputation” of the US.The president pledged to “undo the moral and national shame of the previous administration that literally, not figuratively, ripped children from the arms of their families, their mothers, and fathers, at the border, and with no plan – none whatsoever – to reunify”.The two other orders announced on Tuesday call for a review of the changes the Trump administration made to reshape US immigration, and for programs to address the forces driving people north.A briefing document released before the president’s executive orders said Biden’s immigration plans were “centered on the basic premise that our country is safer, stronger, and more prosperous with a fair, safe and orderly immigration system that welcomes immigrants, keeps families together, and allows people – both newly arrived immigrants and people who have lived here for generations – to more fully contribute to our country”.A central piece of the Tuesday actions is the family reunification taskforce, charged with identifying and enabling the reunification of all children separated from their families by the Trump administration.The government first made the separations public with an April 2018 memo, but about a thousand families had been separated in secret in the months prior. Administration officials said children in both groups would be included in the reunification process.Biden officials said they could not say how many children had to be reunified because the policy had been implemented without a method for tracking the separated families. In an ongoing court case, a reunification committee said in December that the parents of 628 children had not been located.The taskforce will consist of government officials and be led by Biden’s nominee for secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, who was confirmed by the US Senate earlier on Tuesday.A senior administration official said the family separation policy was a “moral failure and national shame” and that reversing the policies that made it possible was a priority.The second action on Tuesday is intended to address the driving forces of migration from Central and South America. Senior administration officials said this included working with governments and not-for-profit groups to increase other countries’ capacities to host migrants and ensuring Central American refugees and asylum seekers have legal pathways to enter the US.It also directs the homeland security secretary to review the migrant protection protocols (MPP), better known as Remain in Mexico, which require asylum seekers to await their court hearings in Mexican border towns instead of in the US, as before.The Biden administration also plans to use this action to bring back some Obama-era policies, such as the Central American Minors (CAM) program, which allowed some minors to apply for refugee status from their home countries.The Trump administration made more than 400 changes to reshape immigration, according to the Migration Policy Institute, and Biden’s third action includes a review of some of these recent efforts to restrict legal immigration.This includes a review of the public charge rule, which the Trump administration expanded to allow the federal government to deny green cards and visas to immigrants if they used public benefits. Though the rule was suspended repeatedly because of lawsuits, its initial introduction created a chilling effect in immigrant communities, with families disenrolling from aid programs out of concerns about its effect on their immigration status.Administration officials said changes to US immigration would not happen “overnight” and that there would be more executive orders.Advocates are still waiting for policies that address immigration detention and Title 42, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) bar on asylum seekers and refugees during the Covid-19 outbreak. An estimated 13,000 unaccompanied migrant children were deported under the order before it was temporarily blocked by a court in November.On Biden’s first day in office, he signed six executive actions on immigration, including to rescind the travel ban on people from Muslim-majority countries and halt funding for constructing the border wall. He also rolled back Trump’s policy that eliminated deportation priorities.Since taking office, Biden has also introduced a comprehensive immigration reform bill to Congress, put a 100-day moratorium on deportations – which has since been blocked in federal court – and rescinded the “zero tolerance” policy that allowed for family separations.On Monday, the Biden administration asked the US supreme court to cancel oral arguments in two forthcoming cases filed by Trump about the border wall and Remain in Mexico. The cases could effectively be moot because of Biden’s actions. More

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      US to resume deporting asylum seekers after judge rejects Biden order

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      US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) is preparing to resume deportations of asylum seekers after a Trump-appointed Texas judge ruled against a 100-day suspension ordered by Joe Biden.The ruling, in response to a challenge from a leading figure in the Republican effort to overturn the election result, marks the first shot in a legal rearguard action by Trump loyalists intended to stymie the Biden administration’s agenda.Human rights activists said the resumption of flights also raised the question of whether Ice agents, who have been accused of systemic abuse of migrants and detainees, might seek to resist the new administration’s efforts to reform the agency.An Ice plane left San Antonio for Port-au-Prince on Monday morning carrying Haitians detained on the US-Mexican border and expelled under a highly controversial Ice interpretation of public health laws.“Deportation flight to Haiti on the first day of Black history month,” Guerline Jozef, co-founder of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, wrote in a text to the Guardian. “What a slap in the face.”According to activists, there are also 23 Africans facing deportation from an Ice holding facility in Alexandria, Louisiana, as early as Tuesday, including 11 Angolans, seven Cameroonians, two Congolese, and three others of unknown nationalities.Although the Haitian flight would probably have gone ahead even under the Biden moratorium, the expected African flight defies that order, as well as guidelines laid down by the acting homeland security secretary, David Pekoske, that came into effect on Monday. Pekoske called for deportations to be limited to suspected terrorists, convicted felons deemed a threat to public security, and undocumented people caught on the border after 1 November.At least some of the potential deportees have legal cases pending, and one of them was granted an emergency stay by an appeals court on Sunday evening. Others expected to be deported on Tuesday or Wednesday.Ice appears to be pushing ahead with the deportation flight despite reports that Cameroonians deported to their home country last October and November in the midst of a bloody civil conflict had been imprisoned, beaten, gone into hiding – or in some cases simply disappeared.“A lot of them were locked up in military prison, which is where they took a whole bunch of people that are arrested by the army,” said Mambo Tse, a Cameroonian community activist in the US. “It’s not safe.”Lauren Seibert, a Human Rights Watch researcher and advocate, said: “After scores of Cameroonians were denied asylum in the US and deported in recent months, Human Rights Watch has documented multiple cases of deportees facing imprisonment, abuse, criminal prosecution and threats by the Cameroonian authorities after their return. Some of their families have also been threatened and harassed.”On taking office on 20 January, the Biden administration ordered a 100-day halt to deportation flights, with certain limited exceptions, while Ice procedures were reviewed to “enable focusing the Department’s resources where they are most needed”.However, a federal judge in Texas, Drew Tipton, appointed by Donald Trump last June, ordered a stay, blocking the suspension, but not the new guidelines. Tipton’s nomination was opposed by Democrats over concerns over his lack of judicial experience and his support for the reinstatement of a Texas social worker fired for using a racial slur against a black colleague. He argued: “It certainly does not evidence a pattern of hostility against anyone or any people who are of a particular race.”The case against the moratorium was brought by the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, who played a leading role in the effort to overturn the 2020 election result.Paxton addressed Trump supporters in Washington on 6 January shortly before the storming of the Capitol.“We will not quit fighting. We’re Texans, we’re Americans, and the fight will go on,” he told the crowd, according to the Houston Chronicle.Paxton has been indicted for securities fraud allegedly committed before he took office. He has also been accused of abuse of office by seven whistleblowers and is being sued for retaliation after having the whistleblowers fired. He is reported to be under FBI investigation for the abuse of office allegations.Paxton’s lawyer, Philip Hilder, declined to comment on the reports of an FBI investigation.After Tipton’s ruling on deportations, Paxton declared “Victory” on his official Twitter account.“Texas is the FIRST state in the nation to bring a lawsuit against the Biden Admin,” he wrote. “AND WE WON.”VICTORY.Texas is the FIRST state in the nation to bring a lawsuit against the Biden Admin. AND WE WON.Within 6 days of Biden’s inauguration, Texas has HALTED his illegal deportation freeze. *This* was a seditious left-wing insurrection. And my team and I stopped it.— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) January 26, 2021
      Echoing the language widely used to denounce the ransacking of the Capitol, Paxton described the 100-day deportations moratorium as “a seditious left-wing insurrection” which he had stopped.In a statement to the Guardian on Monday, an Ice spokesperson said the agency “is in compliance with the temporary restraining order” issued by the Texas court.Justice department lawyers argued against the stay in Tipton’s court, the southern district of Texas, but it was unclear when or whether they would appeal against the ruling. A department spokesperson declined to comment.The American Civil Liberties Union is seeking to challenge the Texan ruling on behalf of immigrant rights groups.“There’s a legal aspect to it and there’s a practical aspect,” Cody Wofsy, an ACLU attorney, said. “Are individual Ice officers who may disagree with the new policies of the new administration going to carry out those policies, or are they going to attempt to carry out a more unforgiving immigration policy that they might prefer?” More

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      Pompeo's exit leaves new secretary of state with task of regaining department's trust

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      No statues were toppled at the state department after Mike Pompeo’s departure. It was a changing of the guard, rather than regime change. But in one case at least, his legacy was brought down quickly and visibly.
      On the day of the inauguration, workmen brought down a giant placard about “professional ethos” that the former secretary of state had erected at the main entrance to mark his first year in office.
      The Trump era was particularly tough for US diplomats, who were regularly maligned as part of the “Deep State” by Donald Trump – and the state department was hollowed out and often sidelined under Pompeo and his predecessor, Rex Tillerson.
      In April 2019, staff had been gathered in the foyer, and Happy by Pharrell Williams was played through the state department public address system, as the “ethos” placard was unveiled.
      Foreign service officers were told they were each a “champion of American diplomacy”. It was supposed to be a morale-boosting exercise but had the opposite effect. To experienced diplomats, it felt like condescension.
      “We are confident that our colleagues do not need a reminder of the values we share,” Ned Price, the incoming department spokesman, noted drily this week.
      The giant sign had also become a monument to hypocrisy as Pompeo was subjected to a string of inspector general investigations about his use of departmental resources for his private ends, sending government officials out for dry cleaning or to walk the dog, and flying his wife, Susan, out on state department trips. Pompeo had the inspector general fired.
      A state department spokesperson confirmed on Thursday that the “Madison Dinners” Pompeo and his wife had staged in the diplomatic reception rooms had been discontinued. His critics said that he was using the well-heeled guest list at the taxpayer-funded events to build up a donor base for a 2024 presidential run.
      In Pompeo’s day, the ground floor corridor leading to the press room was lined with pictures of him in action around the world. Since his departure, it has reverted to tradition, with photographs of several former secretaries going about their work.
      Another Pompeo legacy that has been quietly dropped is the Unalienable Rights Commission a panel of conservative historians and political philosophers, whose report every state department employee was instructed to read. It told them that America’s founding fathers believed that private property and religious freedom were “foremost” among human rights, and that US foreign policy should follow that example.
      At his confirmation hearing, Pompeo’s replacement, Antony Blinken, said he would repudiate the commission’s findings and reaffirm US adherence to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
      In his first speech at the headquarters in Foggy Bottom, Blinken promised staff he would begin “rebuilding morale and trust”. He did not mention his predecessor, but his speech sought to salve the bruises he left. Career diplomats had largely felt ignored, and betrayed when Pompeo declined to defend them in the face of groundless attacks from the White House.
      “I’ll seek out dissenting views and listen to the experts, because that’s how the best decisions are made,” he said. “And I will insist that you speak, and speak up, without fear or favor. And I will have your back.”
      The new management style has not been entirely welcomed. While the nominations for the top jobs in Washington and at the United Nations have gone to highly experienced and competent people, almost all have been political appointees – most of whom had left the department and become politically active – rather than career promotions.
      “The career people feel like you’re sending the message: if you want the top jobs, you’ve got to cozy up to a campaign and raise some big money. And that’s a terrible precedent,” Brett Bruen, director of global engagement in the Obama White House said. “It’s being seen by people who had high hopes for this administration as a slap in the face.”
      Price, the new spokesman, responded by saying Blinken’s “first task will be to invest in the department’s greatest asset: our people”.
      “Under Secretary Blinken’s leadership, career experts will always be at the center of our diplomacy, and he is committed to ensuring that they will help to lead it by serving in many of the department’s most senior positions,” Price said.
      Bruen said most of the top jobs in Washington and New York have already been filled, but the next test of the new secretary of state will be the appointment of ambassadors.
      “Biden said during the campaign he was going to empower and elevate career diplomats,” he said. “Pretty clearly, he hasn’t done in the senior positions so fine: with the ambassadors, appoint fewer than 10% political.” More

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      Trump plots revenge on Republicans who betrayed him as Senate trial looms

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      Republican divisions over Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial came into clearer focus on Sunday, as the former president spent his first weekend out of office plotting revenge against those he says betrayed him.Stewing over election defeat by Joe Biden, four days after leaving the White House, Trump continued to drop hints of creating a new party, a threat some see as a gambit to keep wavering senators in line ahead of the opening of his trial, in the week after 8 February.Democrats will send the single article of impeachment to the Senate for a reading on Monday evening. It alleges incitement of insurrection, regarding the 6 January riot at the US Capitol that left five dead, including a police officer.Trump spent the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, splitting rounds of golf with discussions about maintaining relevance and influence and how to unseat Republicans deemed to have crossed him, the Washington Post reported.Trump, the Post said, has said the threat of starting a Maga (Make America Great Again) or Patriot party, gives him leverage to prevent senators voting to convict, which could lead to him being prevented from seeking office again.We already have a flaming fire in this country and it’s like taking gasoline and pouring it on top of the fireThose in his crosshairs include Liz Cheney, the No3 House Republican, Georgia governor Brian Kemp and others who declined to embrace false claims of election fraud or accused him of inciting the Capitol riot.Other senior Republicans clashed on Sunday over Trump’s trial and the party’s future. Mitt Romney, the Utah senator, former presidential candidate and fierce Trump critic who was the only Republican to vote for impeachment at his first trial last year, said the former president had exhibited a “continuous pattern” of trying to corrupt elections.“He fired up a crowd, encouraging them to march on the Capitol at the time that the Congress was carrying out its constitutional responsibility to certify the election,” Romney told CNN’s State of the Union. “These allegations are very serious. They haven’t been defended yet by the president. He deserves a chance to have that heard but it’s important for us to go through the normal justice process and for there to be resolution.”Romney said it was constitutional to hold a trial for a president who has left office.“I believe that what is being alleged and what we saw, which is incitement to insurrection, is an impeachable offence. If not, what is?”Romney, however, said he did not support action against Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, senators who supported Trump’s claims of a rigged election and objected to results.“I think history will provide a measure of judgment with regard to those that continue to spread the lie that the [former] president began with, as well as the voters in our respective communities,” he said. “I don’t think the Senate needs to take action.”Other Republicans, including Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and Ben Sasse of Nebraska, are expected to vote to convict. But the party is deeply fractured. For a conviction, 17 Republicans would need to vote with the 50 Democrats. It is unclear if that number can be reached, despite assertions from minority leader Mitch McConnell that the mob “was fed lies” by Trump.Marco Rubio of Florida said he thought the trial was “stupid and counterproductive”.“We already have a flaming fire in this country and it’s like taking a bunch of gasoline and pouring it on top of the fire,” he told Fox News Sunday.“I look back in time, for example Richard Nixon, who had clearly committed crimes and wrongdoing. In hindsight I think we would all agree that President Ford’s pardon was important for the country to be able to move forward. I think this is going to be really bad for the country, it’s just going to stir it up even more and make it even harder to get things done.”John Cornyn of Texas, meanwhile, threatened retaliation.“If it is a good idea to impeach and try former presidents, what about former Democratic presidents when Republicans get the majority in 2022?” he tweeted. “Think about it and let’s do what is best for the country.”Mike Rounds, of South Dakota, said he believed the impeachment was unconstitutional, telling NBC’s Meet the Press: “[The US constitution] specifically pointed out that you can impeach the president and it does not indicate that you can impeach someone who is not in office. So I think it’s a moot point.“But for right now there are other things we’d rather be working on. The Biden administration would love more of their cabinet in place and there’s a number of Republicans that feel the same way. We should allow this president the opportunity to form his cabinet and get that in place as quickly as possible.”Republican unity appears increasingly rare. On Saturday, the Arizona Republican party voted to censure Cindy McCain, the widow of the former senator and presidential candidate John McCain, and two other prominent party members who have crossed Trump.The actions drew swift praise from the former president, who backed Kelli Ward, the firebrand state party chair who was the architect of the censure, and who recently won a narrow re-election.Trump, the Post reported, called Ward to offer his “complete and total endorsement”. More

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      Deborah Birx says Covid deniers in Trump White House 'derailed' response

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      The former US coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx has said people in the Trump White House considered Covid-19 a hoax.Birx questioned the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic in a wide-ranging interview broadcast on Sunday. Elsewhere, advisers to Joe Biden described the new president’s plans to control Covid-19 – a challenge made tougher, chief of staff Ron Klain said, by Trump having left office without a vaccine distribution plan in place.More than 417,000 people have died of Covid-19 in the US, out of a caseload of nearly 25m, according to figures kept by Johns Hopkins University in Maryland.In the White House and in the broader public “there were people who definitely believed this was a hoax”, Birx told Face the Nation, on CBS.The former army physician attributed some such skepticism to people’s different experiences with the virus.“They saw people get Covid and be fine and then they had us talking about how severe the disease is and how it could cause these unbelievable fatalities to our American public,” she said.The process to distribute the vaccine … did not really exist when we came into the White HouseAsked if she blamed some such skepticism on Donald Trump, who repeatedly downplayed the virus, Birx said some statements by political leaders “derailed” the coronavirus response.“When you have a pandemic where you’re relying on every American to change their behavior,” she said, “communication is absolutely key, and so every time a statement was made by a political leader that wasn’t consistent with public health needs, that derailed our response. It is also why I went out on the road, because I wasn’t censored on the road.”Birx, who played a key role in the fight against Aids, said she believed the 2020 election was a factor in how information about the coronavirus was shared and that she had “always” considered quitting her White House role under Trump.“I always feel like I could have done more, been more outspoken, maybe been more outspoken publicly,” Birx said. “I didn’t know all the consequences of all of these issues.”Birx has long promoted a data-driven response to disease outbreaks and she suggested such efforts were undermined by people working in the Trump White House. From the time she arrived until she left, she said, unknown advisers were supplying “parallel” coronavirus data.“I saw the president presenting graphs that I never made,” Birx said.Efforts to vaccinate the public have been plagued by delays while a new and more contagious variant of coronavirus that originated in Britain has been identified in at least 20 states.On Sunday Dr Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who also served under Trump but unlike Birx has transitioned to advising Biden, told CBS: “The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines seem to continue to be protective against the mutant strain.”He also said a “mutant” virus variation “now prevalent in South Africa” was “a little bit more concerning”.“It looks like it does diminish more so the efficacy of the vaccine,” he said. “But we’re still within that cushion level of the vaccines being efficacious against these mutants.”On Thursday, the first full day of his presidency, Biden released a 198-page Covid-19 strategy. He has also signed 10 related executive orders or other directives since taking office. The White House said it aims to provide 100m vaccine doses in 100 days.Biden’s nominee for surgeon general, Dr Vivek Murthy, told ABC’s This Week the success of the vaccination campaign should be determined by not just by quantity, but also by how equitably inoculations are delivered.To do this, Murthy said, the government must increase supply by using the Defense Production Act and better targeting distribution with mobile units and community vaccination centers.“We already know from the Covid crisis over the past year that there are certain communities that have been hard hit by this virus,” he said, “that rural communities have had a harder time getting access to resources, that communities of color have experienced more cases and deaths, that seniors have struggled, especially those in long-term facilities”.Murthy also called for a greater investment in treatment strategies, contract tracing and testing. Such efforts combined with people getting vaccinated and adhering to public health guidance, he said, could allow the US to control the pandemic.“If we do these things, and if we continue to work on taking the safety precautions, like masking and avoiding indoor gatherings of people outside your household, then I think we can be on a path to not only turning the pandemic around, but, most importantly, getting our schools open, our workplaces back up and running, and regaining our way of life.”Biden’s nominee for health secretary, Xavier Becerra, warned that improving the pandemic response “won’t happen overnight”.“We can’t just tell the states, ‘Here’s some PPE, some masks, here’s some vaccines, now go do it,’” Becerra told CNN’s State of the Union.Klain, Biden’s chief of staff, told NBC’s Meet the Press: “The process to distribute the vaccine, particularly outside of nursing homes and hospitals out into the community as a whole, did not really exist when we came into the White House.”Klain said obstructions to better distribution include the need for more vaccines, more people to administer shots and more sites to provide it. Klain said the Biden administration was focused on convincing people who are vaccine hesitant, particularly in communities of color, that the vaccine is safe.“Unless we can reduce vaccine hesitancy,” he said, “unless we can get all Americans to take this vaccine, we’re going to continue to see Covid be a problem in our country.” More