Trump aides try shifting coronavirus blame to CDC and Americans with health problems

Health Secretary Azar faded from public view in April but has returned as a sharp-tongued defender of Donald Trump

Senior aides to Donald Trump increasingly are trying to shift blame for the coronavirus pandemic onto government scientists and American citizens with pre-existing health problems.

The president and some of his closest Covid-19 advisers have begun shifting into re-election mode in recent weeks, handing responsibility for future pandemic-related decisions to state and local officials while also trying to shift blame to China, Democratic governors and legislators – and even parts of the administration itself.

Fireworks were all but guaranteed when Peter Navarro, Mr Trump's top trade adviser, was deployed to two Sunday morning political talk shows. The conservative economist if one of the most blunt members of the administration, and he did not hold back, blasting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, further alienating its director, Robert Redfield.

"Early on in this crisis, the CDC, which really had the most trusted brand around the world in this space — really let the country down with the testing," Navarro, told NBC's "Meet the Press."

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"Not only did they keep the testing within the bureaucracy," he added, "they had a bad test and that set us back."

An agency official fired back later as the White House-CDC feud leaked into public telling CNN the Trump administration has a "problem with science."

The CDC and the White House that oversees it have received criticism for a lack of a national testing plan, with even some Republican legislators in recent weeks breaking with Mr Trump in calling for a wider availability of tests. More testing, they say, is the only way to safely reopen parts of the country.

But Mr Trump has time and again flashed his skepticism about testing, saying Thursday it is "overrated" because more tests will drive up the numbers of confirmed cases and deaths. His comment was yet another example of how the president views his own political fate while contemplating the pandemic; he has complained about the number of deaths and cases since the respiratory disease arrived in the United States.

Mr Navarro, however, was not the only senior Trump administration official trying to shift blame for the outbreak from the shoulders of the president.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who had faded from public view in April but has returned as a sharp-tongued defender of Mr Trump, noted on Sunday during a CNN interview that the United States has "significantly disproportionate burden of comorbidities ... (including) obesity, hypertension, diabetes."

"These are demonstrated facts that do make us at risk for any type of disease burden," Mr Azar said.

"Unfortunately the American population is ... very diverse," the HHS secretary said. "It is a population with significant unhealthy comorbidities that do make many individuals in our communities, in particular African American, minority communities particularly at risk here because of significant underlying disease health disparities and disease comorbidities. And that is an unfortunate legacy in our health care system that we certainly do need to address.