Andy Card, the White House chief of staff who famously informed President George W. Bush of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, offered some pointers on how to handle a national crisis.
For one, he said President Donald Trump should keep communicating with the American people but temper some of his verbal excesses.
"I think the president gets high marks for communicating with the American people, so he's been talking to us a lot," Card told Cheddar. "Sometimes he says things with too much hyperbole, and sometimes it's overly optimistic, and sometimes it's measuredly not very striking. I would say be careful with what you say. Your words matter. Taste your words before you spit them out."
Card also noted a crucial difference between the two crises. The 9/11 attacks placed the U.S. on a war footing, which allowed the president to employ some of his powers as commander-in-chief. In the case of a pandemic, he said the president can't subsume the power of governors to issue something like a nationwide quarantine or any other kind of police power.
"Even if he did, it might not take effect, because the governors do have responsibilities over their own states, and the president cannot subsume that unless there is a threat to the government," he said. "This is not a threat to the government that's going on right now."
"I don't think he has the power to mandate it. He has the power to suggest it," he added.
The former White House official did give the president high marks for his efforts at "muscling the federal government to supply states' needs."
Ultimately, Card said the president is only a small factor in responding to a major crisis.
"Clearly on September 11, 2001 America rallied together almost immediately after the attacks," he said. "Presidential leadership was compelling, but we also did rally as American citizens."
Israel rolled tanks into northern Gaza for what the military called a targeted raid aiming to destroy Hamas infrastructure. Meanwhile, the UN Security Council failed to pass two separate resolutions proposed by the U.S. and Russia on humanitarian aid for civilians in Gaza.
Republican Mike Johnson is the new speaker of the House, but the ally of Donald Trump inherits many of the same political problems that have tormented past GOP leaders.
President Joe Biden on Wednesday spoke out against retaliatory attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. He also says he's redoubling his commitment to working on a two-state solution.
The U.N. warned on Wednesday that it is on the verge of running out of fuel in the Gaza Strip, forcing it to sharply curtail relief efforts in the territory blockaded and devastated by Israeli airstrikes since Hamas militants launched an attack on Israel more than two weeks ago.
The judge in Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial fined the former president $10,000 on Wednesday, saying Trump violated a limited gag order barring personal attacks on court staffers.
Republicans eagerly elected Rep. Mike Johnson as House speaker on Wednesday, elevating a deeply conservative but lesser-known leader to the seat of U.S. power and ending for now the political chaos in their majority.
With mail theft and postal carrier robberies up, law enforcement officials have made more than 600 arrests since May in a crackdown launched to address crime that includes carriers being accosted at gunpoint for their antiquated universal keys, the Postal Service announced Wednesday.
