Trump said Monday that he has not seen Pence since the vice president’s press secretary Katie Miller tested positive on Friday, a fact that was underscored by Pence’s absence from Trump’s news conference Monday. Trump said he could confer with Pence by telephone.
Pence said during a call with governors on Monday that he was taking extra precautions, noting that he was “in a separate room on my own” during a videoconference while Dr. Deborah Birx was “in a situation room with some staff,” according to audio of the call obtained by CNN’s Betsy Klein.
But in an awkward balancing act between taking necessary precautions and trying to avoid undercutting Trump’s back-to-business messaging, Pence is merely taking half-measures that fall short of the administration’s own guidelines.
