Schumer Slams Trump for ‘Gross, Obnoxious, Cruel’ Failure on Covid Response: ‘We’re Not Prepared’ for Second Wave

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) slammed the Trump administration for failing to spend $9 billion in leftover money earmarked for testing and tracing as a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic crests throughout the country.

Speaking with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Tuesday night, the Senate’s top Democrat fired back at the president for yet again using “rounding the corner” rhetoric to downplay the pandemic even as the nation’s Covid-19 cases are surging once more in dozens of states and pushing the seven-day average back up near the peaks the country suffered through during the summer.

“The fact that you are still talking about contact tracing and needs for contact tracing is insane eight months into the pandemic,” Cooper said. “Seems like we are rounding the turn into a truck coming at him.”

“Exactly,” Schumer agreed. “The president has been derelict, totally derelict in his responsibilities here since the very beginning. I asked that he declare a national emergency on January 26, they dithered and dallied for months before they even began to do it. And let me tell you something that people don’t know. In the original bill we passed, the $2 trillion bill called the CARES bill, back in April, there was some money to be given to the states for tracing and testing.”

“This government, the Trump government hasn’t distributed it. There’s $9 billion still sitting there right now that could be distributed tomorrow,” Schumer pointed out. “I have never seen such gross, obnoxious, and cruel ignorance and not caring in any administration. It is appalling what they have done here. And we’re going to have a second wave and we’re not prepared for it because this administration is doing such a bad job. The governors are trying. My governor, my mayor, they’re trying. But without federal help you can’t really solve the problem.

Watch the video above, via CNN.