Former President Barack Obama said in 2010, “As president, I have a solemn responsibility to protect our nation and our people, and when the system fails, it is my responsibility.” In 2013, Donald Trump tweeted, “Leadership: Whatever happens, you’re responsible. If it doesn’t happen, you’re responsible.” Only one of the two men lied.
It’s now 2020, and Donald Trump said on Friday, “No, I don’t take responsibility at all.” Trump was referring was his administration’s slow rollout of testing for COVID-19. And he then denied that his own administration fired the government’s entire pandemic response chain of command. Trump killed the pandemic response system that was established during the Obama administration. During his press conference on the coronavirus pandemic that has gripped the world, Trump denied doing the very thing his administration did.
PBS reporter Yamiche Alcindor asked Trump about the US Pandemic Response Team that was disbanded on his watch, by his administration in May 2018, and the president responded by calling it a “nasty question.”
My Q: You said you don’t take responsibility for slow response to coronavirus but your administration disbanded the White House office on pandemics?
President Trump: “That’s a nasty question…When you say me, I didn’t do it. We have a group of people [in the administration].”
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) March 13, 2020
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This is the most cowardly response to a question I’ve heard in my entire life pic.twitter.com/y75Eyd4csY
— Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) March 13, 2020
Fact-checkers have noted that the Trump administration did indeed fire the U.S. pandemic response team in 2018 in order to cut costs.
“Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer abruptly departed from his post leading the global health security team on the National Security Council in May 2018 amid a reorganization of the council by then-National Security Advisor John Bolton, and Ziemer’s team was disbanded,” Snopes writes. “Tom Bossert, whom the Washington Post reported ‘had called for a comprehensive biodefense strategy against pandemics and biological attacks,’ had been fired one month prior.”
“It’s thus true that the Trump administration axed the executive branch team responsible for coordinating a response to a pandemic and did not replace it, eliminating Ziemer’s position and reassigning others, although Bolton was the executive at the top of the National Security Council chain of command at the time,” Snopes concludes.
Trump never replaced the pandemic response task force team that he disbanded. The buck stops with the president whether he owns it or not because there is no one else to blame. This one is on Donald J. Trump.
Featured image via Political Tribune gallery
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