Trump grapples with public health and economic maelstrom

As fears about the coronavirus outbreak roiled financial markets, the nation’s political leaders grappled Monday with a public health and economic maelstrom — as well as concerns for their own safety.

The White House said it is "conducting business as usual," and President Donald Trump sought to project calm as the epidemic poses one of the greatest tests yet to his administration.

Trump officials argued that they had the matter well in hand, and charged political opponents with rooting for an economic collapse. On Capitol Hill, at least two lawmakers were in self-quarantine as discussions were underway on how to address the virus outbreak and economic volatility and keep the government functioning.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar speaks to media outside the West Wing of the White House in Washington, Monday, March, 9, 2020. (AP PhotoCarolyn Kaster)

Trump lashed out in Monday morning tweets, protesting the steep market drop and news that large public gatherings were being called off because of the virus.

"At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths," Trump tweeted, comparing it to seasonal influenza and the thousands of deaths that causes. “Think about that!”

At the same time, administration officials were insistent that they weren't trying to dismiss public concerns. “This is a very serious health problem,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told Fox News.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., greets President Donald Trump as he steps off Air Force One upon arrival at the Orlando Sanford International Airport, Monday, March 9, 2020 in Orlando, Fla. (AP PhotoAlex Brandon)

More people get the flu — tens of millions — and thus even a low death rate can quickly add up to tens of thousands of deaths. But scientists don’t know what the death rate of the new coronavirus actually is and whether it will wind up being about the same as flu or worse. Simple math suggests the death rate of COVID-19 is currently higher than flu, but scientists stress that it will fluctuate because at the beginning of an outbreak, the sickest people are counted first and those with mild illness often are missed.

Trump spent Monday morning headlining a fundraiser in Longwood, Florida, that raised approximately $4 million for his reelection campaign and the Republican Party. He ignored shouted questions about the plunging stock market as he boarded Air Force One for the flight back to Washington.

Trump was delegating much of the virus response to Vice President Mike Pence, who convened a video teleconference to give an update on the federal government's virus response Monday afternoon with the nation's governors. Pence was also scheduled to lead a meeting of the administration's task force on Monday before holding a press briefing.

President Donald Trump walks to greet supporters upon arrival at the Orlando Sanford International Airport, Monday, March 9, 2020 in Orlando, Fla. (AP PhotoAlex Brandon)

Meanwhile, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., put themselves in voluntary quarantine after exposure to a person who tested positive for the virus at last month's Conservative Political Action Conference.

Trump was scheduled to meet Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Larry Kudlow and other aides when he returned to the White House about a range of economic actions he could take. He also invited Wall Street executives to the White House later in the week to discuss the economic fallout of the epidemic.

Kudlow, director of the president’s National Economic Council, told reporters Friday that the administration is not looking at a “massive” federal relief plan. Rather, any federal aid package would be “timely and targeted and micro.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar demonstrates how to greet others with an elbow as he speaks during a television interview outside the West Wing of the White House in Washington, Monday, March, 9, 2020. (AP PhotoCarolyn Kaster)

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill had barely started to contemplate the economic implications of the spread of the virus and what might be needed to stimulate the economy as people cancel vacations and business trips and stay away from stores. A spokesman for Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley said Monday that he is “exploring the possibility of targeted tax relief measures that could provide a timely and effective response to the coronavirus.”

Grassley spokesman Michael Zona said “several options within the committee’s jurisdiction are being considered” as they lawmakers more about the effects on the economy.

Meanwhile, a day after saying it was “proceeding as normal," Trump's campaign canceled a three-day Women for Trump bus tour across Michigan that included Mercedes Schlapp, the former White House aide who is married to the American Conservative Union chairman, Matt Schlapp.

Schlapp is under self-quarantine after after he, too, was exposed to the infected person at CPAC. He introduced Trump and greeted him with a handshake on stage before the president's spoke on Feb. 29.

“The president of the United States, as we all know, is quite a hand washer," press secretary Stephanie Grisham told Fox News. "He uses hand sanitizer all the time. So he's not concerned about this at all.”

Associated Press writers Kevin Freking, Jill Colvin and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — One figure looms large ahead of Uganda's elections Thursday, although he is not on the ballot: the president's son and military commander, Muhoozi Kainerugaba.

Kainerugaba, long believed to be the eventual successor, stood down for his father, President Yoweri Museveni, who is seeking a seventh term that would bring him closer to five decades in power.

Yet Kainerugaba, a four-star general, remains a key figure in Ugandan politics as the chief enforcer of his father’s rule in this east African country. He is the top military commander, appointed by his father nearly two years ago after Kainerugaba told a political rally he was ready to lead.

Kainerugaba’s appointment as army chief put his political campaign on hold — a least, critics say, for as long as Museveni still wants to stay.

Many Ugandans are now resigned to the prospect of hereditary rule, once vehemently denied by government officials who said claims of a secret “Muhoozi Project” for leadership were false and malicious.

Kainerugaba himself has been honest about his presidential hopes since at least 2023 and openly says he expects to succeed his father.

“I will be President of Uganda after my father,” he said in 2023, writing on social platform X. “Those fighting the truth will be very disappointed.”

The president’s son is more powerful than ever, his allies strategically deployed in command positions across the security services. As the presumed heir to the presidency, he is the recipient of loyalty pledges from candidates seeking minor political offices.

Kainerugaba joined the army in the late 1990s, and his fast rise to the top of the armed forces proved controversial.

In February 2024, a month before Kainerugaba was named army chief, the president officially delegated some of his authority as commander-in-chief to the head of the military.

Exercising authority previously reserved for the president, including promoting army officers of high rank and creating new army departments, Kainerugaba is more powerful than any army chief before him, said Mwambutsya Ndebesa, a political historian at Uganda’s Makerere University, adding that family rule appears inevitable.

“Honestly, I don’t see a way out through constitutional means,” he said.

Elections, he said, “is just wasting time, legitimizing authority but not intended as a democratic goal... Any change from Museveni will be determined by the military high command.”

With Museveni not saying when he would retire, a personality cult around Kainerugaba has emerged. Some Ugandans stage public celebrations of his birthday. Campaign posters of many seeking parliamentary seats often feature the emblem of Kainerugaba’s political group, the Patriotic League of Uganda. Speaker of Parliament Anita Among last year called Kainerugaba “God the Son."

The speaker's comments underscored the political rise of Kainerugaba in a country where the military is the most powerful institution and Museveni has no recognizable successors in the upper ranks of his party, the National Resistance Movement.

Some believe Kainerugaba is poised to take over in the event of a disorderly transition from Museveni, who is 81. One critic, ruminating on Kainerugaba’s military rank, has been urging the son to depose his father.

“I have endlessly appealed to Muhoozi Kainerugaba to, at least, pretend to coup his dad, become the opposition hero, and accuse the old man of all the crimes the general Kampala public accuses him of,” Yusuf Serunkuma, an academic and independent analyst, wrote in the local Observer newspaper last year.

“Sadly, Kainerugaba hasn’t heeded my calls thus far. That he is being pampered by his father to the presidency doesn’t look good at all.”

Kainerugaba’s supporters say he is humble in private and critical of the corruption that has plagued the Museveni government. They also say he offers Uganda the opportunity of a peaceful transfer of political power in a country that has not had one since independence from British colonial rule in 1962.

In addition to opposing family rule, his critics point out that Kainerugaba has behaved badly in recent years as the author of often-offensive tweets.

He has threatened to behead Bobi Wine, a presidential candidate who is the most prominent opposition figure in Uganda. He has said the opposition figure Kizza Besigye, jailed over alleged treason charges, should be hanged "in broad daylight” for allegedly plotting to kill Museveni. And he has appeared to confound even his father, who briefly removed him from his military duties in 2022 when Kainerugaba threatened on X to capture the Kenyan capital of Nairobi in two weeks.

Wine said in a recent interview with The Associated Press that Kainerugaba's army "has largely taken over the election.” Wine said his supporters are the victims of violence, including beatings, perpetrated by soldiers.

In its most recent dispatch ahead of voting, Amnesty International said the security forces were engaging in a “brutal campaign of repression.” It cited one event at a rally by Wine’s party, the National Unity Platform, in eastern Uganda on Nov. 28, when one man died after the military blocked an exit and open fired on the crowd.

It was not possible to get a comment from Kainerugaba, who rarely gives interviews.

Frank Gashumba, a Kainerugaba ally and vice chairman of the Patriotic League of Uganda, said Wine was exaggerating the threat against him. “Nobody is touching him,” he said. “He’s lacking the limelight.”

Only one senior member of the president’s party has publicly pushed back against hereditary rule.

Kahinda Otafiire, a retired major general who is among those who were by Museveni’s side when he first took power by force after a guerrilla war in 1986, has urged Kainerugaba to seek leadership on his own merits rather than as his father’s son.

“If you say so-and-so’s son should take over from the father, his son will also want to take over from his grandfather. Then there will be Sultan No. 1, Sultan No. 2, and then the whole essence of democracy, for which we fought, will be lost," Otafiire, who serves as Uganda's interior minister, told local broadcaster NBS last year.

"Let there be fair competition, including Gen. Muhoozi. Let him prove to Ugandans that he is capable, not as Museveni’s son but as he, Muhoozi, who is competent to manage the country.”

Follow AP’s Africa coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/africa

FILE - Lt. Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, son of Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni, attends a "thanksgiving" ceremony in Entebbe, Uganda, May 7, 2022. (AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda, File)