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FACT CHECK: After Saying No “Urgency” to Act on Coronavirus, McConnell Lies About Trump & GOP Response

McConnell Scrambles to Rewrite History on the GOP’s Incompetence Responding to Pandemic, As Lives Lost Climb to More Than 80,000 & Unemployment Rate Spikes to 15%

Despite the fact that the coronavirus has taken more than 80,000 lives, cost more than 33 million jobs, driven the unemployment rate up to a historic 15%, and closed small businesses across the country, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said yesterday that the Senate GOP caucus has not yet “felt the urgency of acting immediately” on additional relief.

Then, in a livestream last night, McConnell falsely claimed the Trump administration and Republicans in Washington were not left with “any kind of game plan for something like” coronavirus, as he tried to shift blame to the previous administration for the lack of pandemic preparation.

Here are the facts on the toxic record Senate Republicans own:

  • New York Times: Before virus outbreak, a cascade of warnings went unheeded. “In 2016, the Obama administration produced a comprehensive report on the lessons learned by the government from battling Ebola. In January 2017, outgoing Obama administration officials ran an extensive exercise on responding to a pandemic for incoming senior officials of the Trump administration.” [3/22/20]
  • POLITICO: Trump team failed to follow NSC’s pandemic playbook. “The 69-page document, finished in 2016, provided a step by step list of priorities — which were then ignored by the administration… The NSC devised the guide — officially called the Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents, but known colloquially as “the pandemic playbook” — across 2016. The Trump administration was briefed on the playbook’s existence in 2017, said four former officials..” [3/25/20]
  • Associated Press: Trump disbanded NSC pandemic unit that experts had praised. “Public health and national security experts… [have] been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump administration’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House charged with preparing for when, not if, another pandemic would hit the nation… Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see the threat of pandemics in the same way that many experts in the field did.” [3/14/20]
  • Reuters: U.S. axed CDC expert job in China months before virus outbreak. “Several months before the coronavirus pandemic began, the Trump administration eliminated a key American public health position in Beijing intended to help detect disease outbreaks in China, Reuters has learned.” [3/22/20]
  • Los Angeles Times: Trump administration ended pandemic early-warning program to detect coronaviruses. “Two months before the novel coronavirus is thought to have begun its deadly advance in Wuhan, China, the Trump administration ended a $200-million pandemic early-warning program aimed at training scientists in China and other countries to detect and respond to such a threat.” [4/2/20]
  • Los Angeles Times: Trump administration is battling coronavirus without a war room. “… without a team that was trained to handle just such a pandemic — drawing on their experiences from SARS in 2002; H1N1 in 2009; Ebola in 2014; Zika in 2016 — the United States was left without a vital rudder, experts and former NSC officials said.” [4/6/20]

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