Eight senior advisors were members of Trump’s Team specifically as it pertained to the pandemic. Each was in some way directly and heavily involved in how the president managed/mismanaged America’s worst public health crisis in over a century. Discussed in the chapter are senior advisor, Jared Kushner; chiefs of staff Mick Mulvaney and Mark Meadows; assistant to the president Peter Navarro; national security advisor Robert O’Brien and his deputy Matthew Pottinger; and counselors to the president Kellyanne Conway and Hope Hicks. During the coronavirus crisis, each of these advisors, like everyone else named in Part III of the book, prioritized the president’s political interest over the national interest.

This chapter is the first in a series of four that together comprise Part III of The Enablers, “Trump’s Team.” This final part of the book focuses on key individuals, each of them named, who were the most prominent and important of Trump’s enablers. As the title of this chapter suggests, it focuses first on Vice President Pence, who played a critical part in the president’s enablement. Then it proceeds to the four members of the president’s cabinet who during the period under discussion were the most involved with the administration’s management of the pandemic, and to the president himself. The four cabinet members are: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin, Attorney General William Barr, and Secretary of Heath and Human Services Alex Azar.