“I Don’t Know Anything About It,” Trump Says...

[Miloch]

...About White House’s Elimination of Pandemic Response Team

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/i-dont-know-anything-about-it-trump-says-about-his-white-house-eliminating-the-pandemic-response-team.html

In May 2018 the Trump administration dismissed the top “global health security”
specialist on the National Security Council and disbanded the
pandemic-preparedness team he had led. (Then–National Security Adviser John
Bolton was said to have been behind the move.) The responsibility for monitoring
infectious disease threats was technically given to another group within the
NSC, but even at the time, the Washington Post wrote that the reorganization was
seen by experts in the field as “a downgrading of global health security.” This
decision has been subject to some scrutiny during the last month of disaster
un-preparedness and global health insecurity.

On Friday PBS correspondent Yamiche Alcindor asked Trump about the subject
during a White House press conference, and his response was, simply put, bad.
Here’s the transcript (“Tony” is Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who, to be clear, has nothing to do with the
National Security Council):

ALCINDOR: You did disband the White House pandemic office, and the officials
that were working in that office left this administration abruptly. So what
responsibility do you take to that, and—the officials that worked in that office
said the White House lost valuable time because that office was disbanded. What
do you make of that?

TRUMP: Well, I just thank it’s a nasty question, because what we’ve done, and
Tony had said numerous times that we saved thousands of lives because of the
quick closing. [Ed.: The closing of borders to some travelers.] And when you say
me, I didn’t do it. We have a group of people, I could ask perhaps, in my
administration, but I could perhaps ask Tony about that, because I don’t know
anything about it. I mean, you say we did that, I don’t know anything about it.
Disbanding, no, I don’t know anything about it …

ALCINDOR: You don’t know about the reorganization that happened at the National
Security Council.

TRUMP: … It’s the administration, perhaps they do that, let people go, you used
to be with a different newspaper than you are now, you know, things like that
happen.

Alcindor’s microphone was cut off as she was asking a follow-up question.

Knowing what we do about Trump’s attention span, it’s possible he sincerely
didn’t know anything about Bolton eliminating the pandemic team. He was also
asked about having an “office of pandemic preparation” in the White House last
week during a visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but
there’s no indication in his answer that he understood that such an office had
previously existed, let alone that his administration was responsible for
getting rid of it. It would not stretch the imagination to learn that before the
past few weeks the president had not given any consideration to pandemic
readiness whatsoever.

In any case, this was amazingly not the moment in Friday’s press conference that
best demonstrated the president’s refusal to take responsibility for the United
States’ response to the coronavirus. That’s because he answered another
question, about the nationwide shortage of viral testing kits, by saying, “I
don’t take responsibility at all.” Good stuff!




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