In the depths of the 2008 economic downturn, incoming White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel uttered one of those controversial but honest lines that shook Washington: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

Now, facing another emerging crisis, the Trump White House appears to agree.


President Donald Trump and his team are talking up the opportunity to finally achieve stricter border security, wider tax cuts and reduced reliance on Chinese manufacturing amid the spread of the coronavirus throughout the U.S. Some officials see it as a narrow opening to offset the political damage from the coronavirus outbreak and deliver — or at least, talk about — some of the president’s longstanding promises.

“Whether it is the virus that we’re talking about or many other public health threats, the Democrat policy of open borders is a direct threat to the health and well-being of all Americans,” Trump said at a recent rally in South Carolina. “Now, you see it with the coronavirus. You see it. You see it with the coronavirus. You see that. When you have this virus or any other virus or any other problem coming in, it’s not the only thing that comes in through the border.”

Shutting down borders or cutting taxes would not halt the spread of the virus, which is now being spread person-to-person within the U.S. and which scientists are still struggling to understand. The ideas, however, are central to Trump’s popularity with his base heading his 2020 re-election race, and the outbreak gives both the president and his top aides a new space to re-introduce their favorite approaches amid the uncertainty.

Pushing favored policies in a crisis would put Trump in line with his predecessors.


After 9/11, President George W. Bush pushed for counterterrorism measures and regime change in Iraq — long-sought goals of his aides — based on faulty evidence of weapons of mass destruction, an argument that seemed far more potent after the Twin Towers fell.

After the 2008 global financial crisis, President Barack Obama spent his first year in office trying to stabilize the economy, deploying a massive stimulus program that included long-sought programs around the environment and infrastructure. Obama’s team also used the crisis moment to push a progressive agenda on health care, reducing auto emissions and climate change.

“It was still a pretty bold year and not all directly related to Wall Street collapsing,” said Julian Zelizer, a Princeton University professor who studies American political history.

A century ago, President Woodrow Wilson used the 1918 Spanish flu to exert more control over the economy, said Max Skidmore, a professor of political science at the University of Missouri-Kansas City who has studied presidents and pandemics. Wilson’s efforts included leaning on emergency powers and executive orders to control the distribution of food and fuel as well as the railroad.


This strategy of using crisis as a moment of opportunity comes with political risk.

“It only works to take a lot of action in crisis if you are first dealing with basic needs,” Zelizer said. “Otherwise, you look like President George W. Bush did following Hurricane Katrina, when he looked distracted and not dealing with basic problems.”

“Right now, you need to get people hand sanitizer,” he said.

The coronavirus outbreak has given the Trump administration’s China hawks the chance to highlight the a core trade concern — how the U.S. leans so heavily on China for drugs, medical equipment and key elements of the supply chain.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a close Trump ally, is calling for the White House to enact a one-time tax credit for companies that move manufacturing from China back into the U.S., one of many stimulus ideas that Trump advisers and allies are floating amid concerns about an economic downturn related to the spread of the virus.

“How many medicines are only available from China?” Gingrich asked. The tax credit “would be an economic stimulus but also national security issue.”

Similarly, Trump spent time last week promoting the need for middle-class tax cuts amid severe volatility in the stock market and fears of a coronavirus-induced recession. Trump tweeted out support for a temporary payroll tax cut as well as broad tax cuts for the middle class, moves he said he would push if the Democrats went along with them.

“I think it would be a good time,” he told reporters.


But behind the scenes, his economic aides have been working on a tax cut 2.0 package that they tentatively plan to release this fall — a concept the National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow previewed long before the coronavirus landed in the U.S. The details remain fluid, but the package could involve additional cuts to marginal rates for individuals, or efforts to make permanent the middle-class tax cuts from the 2017 Republican tax bill.

On the economic front, Trump has also employed the coronavirus as a means to call for the Federal Reserve to further cut interest rates. “I think what happens is the Fed should cut and the Fed should stimulate,” Trump told reporters on Friday. “And they should do that because other countries are doing it, and it puts us at a competitive disadvantage.”

Trump has long criticized Fed Chair Jerome Powell for not cutting interest rates to the degree he would like, although the central bank did cut rates last week in an emergency, surprise move. The last time central bank took such action was during the 2008 global financial crisis.

“This is an excuse for him to beat up the Fed,” said one Republican close to the White House. “He is using another event to beat the Fed up, but it will not fix the problem.”

Senior administration officials have commended the president for his early action in shutting down flights between the U.S. and China, requesting additional funding from Congress and pushing for a vaccine as quickly as possible. The White House has also tried to be responsive to the business communities’ concerns, hosting calls and meetings with various sectors like the airlines and drug makers that have come under unexpected business pressure due to the virus.

During the desperate days of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in August 2005, President George W. Bush was seen as tone-deaf and unresponsive. | Dave Martin/AP Photo

Critics argue the administration wasted valuable time in ramping up its capacity to test Americans for the coronavirus.

Trump also leaned early into protecting himself politically in the crisis. Always skeptical of career government officials, “Trump has used the opportunity to put nonprofessionals in charge,” said Skidmore, the expert on presidents and pandemics. “He already dismantled the protective structures on pandemics that Obama put in place. Now he has to resort to delivering mixed messages to the public.”

Public health crises present their own leadership challenges because no leader wants to cast them as too partisan, or to appear insensitive to the health of Americans, said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian and professor of history at Rice University.


Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina, a natural disaster that also became a public health issue, haunted his presidency because he slashed funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and put his friend in charge of the agency; the agency was not prepared when the hurricane hit.

Trump “better be very careful on a public health crisis in trying not to seem like he is optimizing it,” said Brinkley. “There is no aspect of the coronavirus story that is helpful for Trump right now. It has lose, lose, lose all over it.”