One senior administration official blamed the national security staff for bungling the early coronavirus response. Other aides blamed the vice president’s office, which has taken the lead on the response. “The Office of the Vice President seems way in over their heads,” one White House official said, referring to the coordination and messaging. “They don’t know what they’re doing.”

Separately, some aides took issue with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield, who’d dutifully stood by Trump during his Friday visit to the Atlanta agency and commended the president for his “decisive leadership.” Trump, for his part, continued to denigrate the media and Democrats on Twitter for overhyping the coronavirus threat…

“The No. 1 rule for me, if I were back in that building, would be to get people to stop looking backwards,” said Thomas Bossert, Trump’s former homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, during a Monday morning appearance on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“This is a leadership opportunity for the president to paint for the American people what it is going to look like over the next couple of weeks, months, up to a year,” he added.