Trump says he'll announce members of 'opening our country council' next week

By Marianne LeVine

4-5 minutes

President Donald Trump. | Alex Wong/Getty Images

President Donald Trump said he’s planning a Tuesday announcement to name the members of a new White House task force focused on reopening parts of the country that have been shuttered because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“We’re also setting up a council, a very, very great — doctors and businesspeople, we’re going to be announcing it on Tuesday, of some great people,” Trump told reporters at a coronavirus task force briefing at the White House on Friday.
Trump had publicly mulled forming a second group of advisers to focus on economic recovery apart from the group of public health officials on the task force run by Vice President Mike Pence.

The new group comes as the president has expressed his eagerness for several weeks now to shake the country from its self-imposed social and economic lockdown, though medical experts have warned that resuming business as usual before the virus is under control and widespread diagnostic measures can be implemented could have dire consequences.

Trump indicated Friday that the new group would look further than reviving the sputtering economy.

“This is beyond economic,” he explained. “This is really, I call it the ‘opening our country task force’ or ‘opening our country council’ so we don't get it confused with Mike's task force, which has done so great. And we’re going to have the great business leaders, great doctors, we’re going to have a great group of people.”

In keeping with social distancing recommendations still in place to blunt the spread of the coronavirus, Trump suggested the group will meet by teleconference “because we don't really want them traveling in for their own purposes.”
While the president remained mum on any potential names, he told reporters he wanted to prioritize geographic diversity and wouldn’t be placing any ideological restrictions on its members.
He did affirm he planned to extend invitations to at least a handful of governors in the states hardest hit by the virus.
“I think we’re gonna put some governors,” Trump said, explaining that he’d “gained great respect” for a handful of governors throughout the crisis, going as far as to say the pandemic had allowed him to befriend “some of the Democrat governors that I wouldn't really have had the privilege of getting to know.”
Among the names he mentioned were Democratic Govs. Phil Murphy of New Jersey, John Bel Edwards of Louisiana, Gavin Newsom of California, Andrew Cuomo of New York and GOP Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio.

“So yeah, I want to put on both parties, I want to have some governors, I’m not gonna have all of the governors but I’d like to put some representative governors on the council.”

The president told reporters he’d already extended invitations to a “couple” prospective members, adding that so far everyone he’d asked had accepted.

While Trump has sparked fears that he could forge ahead with his requests to reopen the economy over the objections of his public health experts, he sought to assure reporters Friday he would heed their advice and didn’t rule out shuttering parts of the country again if a new wave of infections sprung up.
“I’m not determined anything — the facts are going to determine what I do,” he said, calling the decision the most significant of his presidency. “But we do want to get the country open. So important. So I have a task force, I'll have a council, it is going to be announced on Tuesday with names that you have a lot of respect for, a lot of great names, different businesses, different people.”

Join Geezgo for free. Use Geezgo's end-to-end encrypted Chat with your Closenets (friends, relatives, colleague etc) in personalized ways.>>