Coronavirus, Power & Security, Public Health Will Trump’s Case of COVID-19 Endanger U.S. National Security?

Perry World House's John Gans is quoted in this piece from Foreign Policy looking at what President Trump's illness means for national security.

Officials and veteran national security experts in the United States warn that President Donald Trump’s positive coronavirus test raises the specter of new aggressive moves from foreign adversaries and exposes the upper echelons of the U.S. government, including national security officials who surround Trump, to possible infection...

“The whole way the U.S. government makes national security decisions was built because of infirm or injured presidents,” said John Gans, a former Pentagon official and author of White House Warriors: How the National Security Council Transformed the American Way of War. “The National Security Council was created because people were scared to death of the way Franklin Roosevelt made decisions during World War II while keeping information from everybody in government … and then he died and they were left in the dark.”

“The systems, the process, the meetings, and communications that were all created as a result of these fears of what could happen—Trump has let it all fall into disuse,” Gans said.

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