Until Donald Trump read their names out loud in the Rose Garden of the White House this week, leaders from several high-profile corporations had no idea they’d been tapped to help advise the president to restart the nation’s coronavirus-ravaged economy. “We got a note about a conference call, like you’d get an invite to a Zoom thing, a few lines in an email, and that was it. Then our CEO heard his name in the Rose Garden,” a lobbyist for one of the blindsided companies told the Washington Post Wednesday. “What the [expletive]? How do you go from ‘Join us on a call’ to, ‘Well, you’re on the team?’”

McDonald’s, Cisco, and Pfizer were among the companies to be taken by surprise by their inclusion in Trump’s so-called “Opening Our Country Council,” a task force of the “best and smartest” industry leaders that the president said Tuesday would help guide the resuscitation of the United States economy. “We’ll get it open,” Trump promised in his Tuesday briefing, reiterating that he’d like to begin relaxing social distancing recommendations by the beginning of next month or sooner—even as confirmed cases and deaths due to the novel coronavirus continue to grow in the U.S.

That target date to return to normal was already little more than a fantasy from a desperate president wholly outmatched by the job before him, but the fact that the council—one of many competing working groups and task forces shaping the administration’s response—is being rolled out in Trump’s characteristically chaotic fashion underscores just how messy the White House’s back-to-work-by-May efforts will prove. In addition to those companies left completely in the dark until Tuesday, several others were reportedly given very little detail about what their work on the panel would entail. And, the New York Times reported, other business leaders struggled to participate in Wednesday’s round of meetings thanks to scheduling conflicts and technical issues.

The council has had a shaky go of it from the get-go, with initial reports that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump had been tapped as members. The president’s daughter and son-in-law are evidently off the panel, but no matter—its leadership still includes luminaries like Mark Meadows, Ben Carson, and Wilbur Ross, the latter of whom is best known for dozing off during meetings and for predicting, in January, that the deadly coronavirus would actually be good for America economically.

Such an advisory panel might be useful, if Trump was actually capable of listening to differing opinions. The coronavirus, after all, has been an absolute wrecking ball to the U.S. economy, sending unemployment skyrocketing and shutting down a wide swath of American industry. But returning to normal will likely be impossible until the virus is brought to heel, and despite some encouraging trends in hard-hit states thanks to the very social distancing measures Trump wants to relax, the U.S. remains in the throes of the COVID crisis. “Unless people feel safe and secure and confident around the virus, the economic impact will continue in some way, shape, or form,” Goldman Sachs chief executive David Solomon said on a call with Trump Wednesday, according to a transcript obtained by the Post.

That kind of realistic thinking so far seems to be falling on deaf ears. Trump, predictably, used the calls Wednesday as an opportunity to “bask in the praise from CEOs,” as a person on one of the afternoon sessions recounted to the Post, and showed no sign of budging from his target date. “Trump made it very clear he was ready to go on May 1,” the source said.

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