Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) blamed Trump’s denial and delay for the deaths of Americans and hinted that the House would be investigating in the future.
Transcript via CNN’s State Of The Union:
PELOSI: What the president — his denial at the beginning was deadly. His delaying of getting equipment to where — it continues — his delay in getting equipment to where it’s needed is deadly.
And now I think the best thing would be to do is to prevent more loss of life, rather than open things up, so that — because we just don’t know. We have to have testing, testing, testing — that’s what we said from the start — before we can evaluate what the nature of it is in some of these other regions as well.
I don’t know what the purpose of that is. I don’t know what the scientists are saying to him. I don’t know what the scientists said to him. When did this president know about this and what did he know? What did he know and when did he know it?
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That’s for an after-action review. But as the president fiddles, people are dying. And we have to — we just have to take every precaution.
TAPPER: Speaker Pelosi, when you say that the president’s denial was deadly…
PELOSI: Yes.
TAPPER: … he obviously downplayed the risks of coronavirus for several weeks. And it wasn’t until I think about two weeks ago that he started acknowledging the gravity of the crisis.
But are you saying that his downplaying ultimately cost American lives?
PELOSI: Yes, I am. I’m saying that, because when he made — the other day, when he was signing the bill, he said, just think, 20 days ago, everything was great.
No, everything wasn’t great. We had nearly 500 cases and 17 deaths already. And in that 20 days, because we weren’t prepared, we now have 2,000 deaths and 100,000 cases.
Video:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the President downplaying the severity of coronavirus is “deadly."
“As the President fiddles, people are dying. We just have to take every precaution.†#CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/EAnhwW0QKi
— CNN (@CNN) March 29, 2020
Since the Trump administration itself will not do a credible after-action review, it is going to be up the committees in the House to investigate what Trump knew, when he knew it, and how it influenced his coronavirus response.
Trump definitely bungled the response and fueled the spread of the virus through denial and delay, but there will be time for investigation and review when the pandemic has ended.
It is important for our political leaders to stand up for facts at a time when the president is only interested in optics and political spin. Speaker Pelosi is calling Trump out and laying the groundwork to hold him accountable for criminal leadership failures.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
