This week, while President Donald Trump was visiting India to strengthen trade between the two countries, a CDC official was making a blatant effort to undermine the Administration’s stance on the coronavirus.
Trump officials, and upon his return the president himself, were trying to reassure Americans that health officials were working to protect Americans. CDC Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Nancy Meissonnier was taking a different approach.
“It’s not so much a question of if this will happen anymore, but more really a question of when it will happen,” she said, according to NPR, adding that a “significant disruption” to Americans’ daily lives is possible.
“We are asking the American public to work with us to prepare with the expectation that this could be bad.”
That statement sounds very much like a concerned public health official being cautious about a potentially deadly flu outbreak. There are some facts behind that statement that warrant a closer look and raise questions about its sincerity, however.
First and foremost, ACV Reports has found that Meissonnier is disgraced former Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s sister. He stated that in
Rosenstein, who played a role in the firing of former FBI Director James Comey, had a checkered relationship with Trump. In 2018, The New York Times linked Rosenstein to an internal administration plot to record Trump in secret and then invoke the 25th Amendment, under which a president can be removed for being unfit to perform his duties. Although Rosenstein denied the claim, the accusation cast a shadow over his final months as deputy attorney general.
During a hearing to be confirmed to that post, Rosenstein submitted written testimony saying that his sister was “Dr. Nancy Meissonnier and that “she is the Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
Fears that the coronavirus will have devastating impacts beyond those already being registered around the globe have triggered a major Wall Street selloff. President Donald Trump has pushed back against the culture of panic, and there is evidence the panic is the creation of those opposed to President Trump.
During a hearing to be confirmed to that post, Rosenstein submitted written testimony saying that his sister was “Dr. Nancy Meissonnier and that “she is the Director of the at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
The combination of her recent comments and her family connection has led some commentators to voice a concern that Meissonnier might be hyping a hoax with motives that have nothing to do with health.
Rosenstein is alleged to have worked to undermine the Trump administration during the Russia hoax. It seems ironic that Rosenstein's sister may be attempting to undermine the more logical and calm message the president’s team has issued on the virus.
It’s interesting to see the contrast in statements from those that are clearly aligned with the president to those who are not. It would be easy to consider the possibility this is yet another instance of D.C. swamp creatures using any opportunity to undermine President Trump.
Talk show host Rush Limbaugh has said that over-hyped predictions about the virus are driven by politics and not medicine.
“It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump,” he said on a recent broadcast.
Others have defended Meissonnier.
“I’ve heard people jumping on Nancy Meissonnier because she told us the truth: that it’s not a matter of if but when,” Republican Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma said, according to Politico. “Isn’t that what you want to hear instead of some pie in the sky?”
Some took the approach that if conservative commentators were citing the connection, there must be nothing to it.
Limbaugh, however, stuck to his guns and said that political motives should never be dismissed.
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