Coronavirus: Trump blames Obama for his own administration's mistakes in dealing with outbreak
Donald Trump has blamed his government’s shambolic response to the coronavirus epidemic on the Obama administration – without offering any evidence or explanation.
The US president claimed the Obama administration “made a decision on testing that turned out to be very detrimental to what we’re doing, and we undid that decision a few days ago so that the testing can take place in a much more accurate and rapid fashion”.
Declining to specify what decision he was referring to, Mr Trump added: “That was a decision we disagreed with. I don’t think we would have made it, but for some reason, it was made.”
Mr Trump has previously drawn comparisons between his response to the outbreak and the Obama administration’s response to the ebola epidemic of 2014. At the time, he called his predecessor “a psycho” and railed against evacuations of Americans from areas hit with ebola – a tactic his own administration is now employing.
Barack Obama’s “ebola czar”, Ronald Klain, has strongly criticised the Trump administration’s handling of the current epidemic, telling MSNBC the government response was subject to “a crisis of both confidence and competence”.
The have been nine deaths from coronavirus in the US so far. On Thursday the first outside Washington state was confirmed in California, which has declared a state of emergency.
The US has struggled to manage its response to the spread of the disease, with initial diagnostic efforts badly botched and federal workers sent to help quarantined people without proper protection.
Some have blamed difficulties in responding to he virus on numerous cuts to relevant agencies and programmes imposed by the Trump administration.
The president himself has repeatedly appeared startlingly uninformed about the virus, recently suggesting it could be prevented with the flu vaccine.
Mr Trump has also been criticised for appointing his vice-president, Mike Pence, to head up the response to the epidemic. While governor of Indiana, Mr Pence was blamed for responding too slowly to an HIV outbreak, reportedly because of his reluctance to open needle exchanges. Hundreds of people were ultimately infected.
