White House teases executive orders on China, immigration and prescription drugs
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said Monday that President Donald Trump plans to sign a handful of executive orders this week as the president looks to right his reelection campaign after a brutal June that saw his poll numbers plummet amid a coronavirus resurgence and racial unrest.
In an interview on “Fox & Friends,” Meadows gave few details about the coming orders except that they will pertain to China, bringing manufacturing jobs back from overseas, immigration and prescription drug prices. The chief of staff cast the orders as the White House pushing forward with some of its top priorities after stalling in Congress.
“We're going to get them done when Congress couldn't get them done,” Meadows, a former North Carolina congressman, said, adding that the orders will demonstrate “business that actually goes forward from the Oval Office when Congress doesn't act.”
But the timing of the new orders comes after a particularly bruising month for the White House.
As states across the country began to reopen amid the coronavirus pandemic, more than half the country began to see increasing infection rates in recent weeks, leading more than a dozen states to halt or roll back their reopening process as the country saw numerous record-breaking daily cases reported. The White House, meanwhile, has given mixed messages about the outbreak as it has sought to play down the severity of the spikes.
The pandemic flareups unfolded against a backdrop of sustained racial unrest following the police killing of George Floyd in late May, with Trump stoking the culture wars by disparaging protesters and leaning into “law and order,” defending military bases named after Confederates, and vowing to protect statues protesters have attempted to topple.
Also last month, the president’s first campaign rally since the pandemic began drew a paltry turnout while poll after poll showed Trump trailing former Vice President Joe Biden, in some cases by an increasing margin.
Meadows did not miss the opportunity to contrast Trump’s coming executive orders with Biden’s lengthy political record, deploying an attack the campaign has used often.
“The interesting thing is this president will do more in the next four weeks than Joe Biden and his team did in the last 40 years,” he claimed. “So you just need to stay tuned.”
