Trump says Obama & Biden ‘didn’t have a clue how to handle swine flu’ after ex-prez ripped his ‘disaster’ COVID response
DONALD Trump fired back at former President Barack Obama after he blasted the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic as “an absolute chaotic disaster.”
The president tweeted on Sunday that his administration is “getting great marks for the handling of the CoronaVirus pandemic, especially the very early BAN of people from China, the infectious source, entering the USA.”
“Compare that to the Obama/Sleepy Joe disaster known as H1N1 Swine Flu. Poor marks, bad polls – didn’t have a clue!” he added.
During a call with supporters and former members of his administration to discuss the 2020 election, a recording of which was obtained by Yahoo News, Obama lashed out at Trump.
“This election that’s coming up on every level is so important because what we’re going to be battling is not just a particular individual or a political party,” Obama said.
“What we’re fighting against is these long-term trends in which being selfish, being tribal, being divided, and seeing others as an enemy — that has become a stronger impulse in American life.”
Trump has boasted about his administration’s response to the outbreak:
- Trump reportedly ignored early warnings from health officials about the coronavirus
- He implemented travel restrictions on those coming from China on January 31
- On March 10, Trump said: “Just stay calm. It will go away.”
- Coronavirus is declared a global pandemic on March 11
- On the same day, Trump declared a national emergency and announced the European travel ban
“And by the way, we’re seeing that internationally as well. It’s part of the reason why the response to this global crisis has been so anemic and spotty.”
“It would have been bad even with the best of governments,” Obama said during the call.
“It has been an absolute chaotic disaster when that mindset — of ‘what’s in it for me’ and ‘to heck with everybody else’ — when that mindset is operationalized in our government.”
Obama added this was why he will be “spending as much time as necessary and campaigning as hard as I can for Joe Biden.”
It is his clearest signal yet he will make a significant contribution to the 2020 presidential race after critics claimed he was slow to give his former vice president an endorsement.
Obama has urged his supporters to back Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, who is trying to unseat Trump in November.
Since leaving the White House in 2017, Obama has remained a low profile in the political realm — even when Trump would criticize him on Twitter.
Trump has repeatedly defended himself and his administration’s responded to the coronavirus.
He’s said that travel restrictions he implemented on those coming from China and Europe, along with social distancing guidelines, have prevented even worse damage.
“I think we saved millions of lives,” Trump said earlier this week.
As of Sunday, more than 1,350,800 cases of coronavirus were reported in the US — and the death toll topped 80,000 people.
Trump has claimed his administration was given a “broken system” and a “broken tests” from the Obama administration — despite the novel coronavirus not existing until last year, when he was years into his presidency.
On Twitter on Sunday, Trump again said Obama and Biden had “poor remarks” and “bad polls” regarding the H1N1 pandemic, otherwise known as “swine flu,” in 2009.
Trump said they “didn’t have a clue,” and previously tweeted “their response to H1N1 Swine Flu was a full scale disaster, with thousands dying, and nothing meaningful done to fix the testing problem, until now.”
During Obama’s presidency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s flu surveillance network sounded the alarm after spotting two children in California who were diagnosed with the new flu strain.
Two weeks later, the US declared a public health emergency and the CDC began releasing anti-flu drugs from the national stockpile to help hospitals get ready.
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Trump declared a state of emergency because of the coronavirus seven weeks after the first US case of COVID-19 was announced.
From April 2009 to 2010, there were a reported 60.8million cases of the H1N1 strain, with 12,469 deaths, according to the CDC.
A vaccine was produced and made available in large quantities in November 2010, after the peak of the illness during the second wave that came and went in the US.