The hits just keep on coming

In mid-March, a National Security Council team rushed to address what they saw as a threat to the U.S. government’s ability to function amid the advancing pandemic: a lack of masks to protect enough staff on the White House complex.

Alarmed by the small cache and the growing signs of an acute shortage of protective gear in the United States, a senior NSC official turned to a foreign government for help.

[...]

The effort resulted in a donation of hundreds of thousands of surgical masks from Taiwan, which had plentiful domestic production and had sharply curtailed the spread of the coronavirus on the island.

The bulk of Taiwan’s goodwill shipment went to the Strategic National Stockpile, but 3,600 masks were set aside for White House staff and officials, administration officials said.

[...]

“That was a lesson learned. We did look at buying some, but couldn’t find available supply.”

[...]

At the time, the U.S. government was discouraging the public from wearing masks, saying that healthy people didn’t need them and that the gear should be saved for front-line medical workers most at risk of infection.

Because of that guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the White House was not issuing masks to its staff, according to two officials. But inside the NSC, a top deputy was convinced that face coverings should be used more broadly to protect both his team and the public at large.

The resulting arrangement he struck with Taipei made thousands of masks available for White House staff use two weeks before the administration reversed policy and advised that citizens should broadly begin wearing cloth face coverings in public.

[...]

From January until April 3, the White House task force, the CDC and the U.S. surgeon general were all telling the American public that healthy people should not use masks or face coverings to protect themselves from the coronavirus.

Surgeon General Jerome Adams stressed that most Americans faced low risk of infection, but warned that mask wearers could heighten their risk because they were more likely to touch their faces as they adjusted their masks. He urged the public to save the supply for medical workers on the front lines.

“Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS!” Adams tweeted on Feb. 29, as stores across the country sold out. “They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus."

  WaPo

And that should be a crime, because it's definitely criminal. He should not have a job now, at the very least, but he was just doing what he was told to do.

The White House Military Office, which oversees the medical unit, is responsible for girding the White House for a crisis, including supplying necessary protective equipment and ensuring the continuity of government operations.

The White House said the office had sufficient supplies to protect the president, the first family and essential personnel.

Everybody else is expendable. Just wait until he wants another cheeseburger and the cooks in the basement are all dead.

When Taiwan later announced its mask donation, it did not mention that a portion of it was going to White House staff. A joint statement between the two countries said they would collaborate on “exchanges of medical supplies and equipment.”

The deal was sensitive in Taiwan, which had banned commercial exports of masks to protect supply for its citizens. China, which claims the island as part of its territory, called the transfer of masks to the United States during a pandemic “despicable behavior” and said it was provoking a “confrontation with the Motherland.”

[...]

At the time, Taiwan had a ban on the commercial export of masks to meet the needs of its own citizens, who were only allowed to buy a limited number a week.

The shipment of masks between the United States and Taiwan sidestepped this ban because it was a government-to-government arrangement, rather than a foreign purchase from a Taiwanese manufacturer.

[...]

After its initial shipment of masks for the U.S. government, Taiwan late last month announced it was donating 10 million masks to foreign countries to help combat the pandemic. It is now expected to send 3.5 million to the United States, earmarked for emergency medical workers.

If the feds don't confiscate them like they've done with other PPE shipments being ordered by various states.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.