Mike Bloomberg Pans Trump on Coronavirus Response: Obama ‘Was Much Better Prepared’
Former Republican New York City Mayor and current Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg criticized President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus outbreak, and compared it unfavorably with twice-popularly elected former President and Trump nemesis Barack Obama’s response to an Ebola outbreak during his presidency.
On Friday morning’s edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Kasie DC host Kasie Hunt played her recent interview of Bloomberg, and the first question Hunt asked was about the burgeoning pandemic that is dominating the news.
“Do you trust, and should Americans trust, President Trump to deal with this crisis?” Hunt asked.
“No,” Bloomberg said, without hesitation. “He has not prepared for a crisis like this, quite the contrary. He fired the pandemic specialist two years ago, he’s defunded or unfunded or reduced the funding for Centers for Disease Control, he’s had 1600 scientists leave the government in the first two years of his office.”
“You don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but you have to have trained people who are practiced working together and established trust in each other and know where to go so that you can have a team that can at the last minute adjust your solutions to whatever problem arises,” Bloomberg added.
“Do you think President Obama did a better job handling Ebola then President Trump has done so far?” Hunt asked.
“Well, I don’t know how you answer that, I can tell you President Obama had in place teams like I just described,” Bloomberg said, adding “So he was much better prepared.”
Bloomberg acknowledged that many aspects of a crisis like this are out of a leader’s hands, but said “I think Obama had a much greater understanding that you can’t do everything by yourself.”
During the 2014 Ebola outbreak, Trump constantly attacked President Obama, and tried to foment panic about an outbreak that would conclude with just four cases of transmission within the United States.
Watch the clip above via MSNBC.
