Campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Barack Obama is pushing the point that her GOP rival Donald Trump lacks compassion as well as competence. To illustrate his contention while hitting the trail in Las Vegas, Obama cited the pandemic plan he left with the White House when Trump replaced him, and claimed Trump “ignored” it while millions of people died.
Asserting that “it does matter” if a President is cavalier instead of responsible, callous instead of compassionate, Obama told the Harris rally crowd that during the pandemic more Americans would have survived if Trump had used the plan
That’s “people’s grandparents, people’s fathers, people’s moms who would’ve been alive if Trump had just paid attention and tried to follow the plan that we gave him,” Obama said. “It might have been somebody in your family that could’ve been impacted. So, if somebody tells you that this doesn’t make a difference, having somebody competent who cares about you.”
(Obama qualified his claim by saying the pandemic still would have been a major problem — a “generational pandemic” — no matter who was in the Oval Office. But he noted for contrast that the per capita death rate was 40% higher in the U.S. than in neighboring Canada.)
Obama: When I was president, I had been talking to scientists for a while so during my last year in office, we put together a pandemic playbook for how to deal with the eventuality of a pandemic.. When Trump came in, we gave over this playbook and he threw it out. I want to be… pic.twitter.com/K7gnGmwD9U
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 20, 2024
There is evidence that Obama’s team left a plan. As the pandemic shocked and sickened the nation in 2020, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) talked about preparedness and stated that “we want to be ready early for the next one. Because clearly the Obama administration did not leave any kind of game plan for something like this.”
That statement was quickly refuted by Obama administration veterans who said it was false and linked to the plan — Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents — as proof.
Besides the booklet, they gave #45 a 3-hour tutorial. The Federal Storehouse was fully stocked. AND they left a Pandemic Response Team that #45 disbanded.
This Administration was adequately prepared to face this pandemic, but were either too stupid, arrogant or indifferent. pic.twitter.com/sSeWskQqV9
— AuntieReallyLovesFarscape (@Content_Retired) May 12, 2020
The circa-2020 tweet above asserts that the federal storehouse was fully stocked — a sign of preparedness — which USA Today disputed, at least concerning N-95 masks.
Reporting revealed that the stockpile’s mask resources — due to a combination of congressional funding disputes and executive branch prioritization of drugs and vaccines — were not fully replenished after their use during hurricanes Alex, Irene, Isaac and Sandy, and for Ebola virus and zika virus outbreaks, and the H1N1 pandemic response.
The Trump administration — in office for two years before the pandemic began — did not replenish the stockpile shortages either.