Susan Rice Shreds Trump for Recklessly Exposing WH Staff, Pentagon Leaders to Covid: ‘He Literally Doesn’t Give a Damn About Anybody Around Him’
Former Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice called out the national security risks from President Donald Trump’s reckless behavior that led to his infection as well as more than 100 White House staffers and most of the top leaders at the Pentagon.
Speaking with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Rice excoriated Trump for his ongoing dismissal of the coronavirus and the apparent outbreak now ricocheting around Washington because of his negligence. As of Tuesday evening, the scale of the pandemic’s spread has soared past 100 and has now also forced eight of the country’s top flag officers to self-isolate because of their contact with the president.
New: There are now 123 front-line workers in the Capitol complex who have have tested positive—or are presumed positive—for COVID-19, according to House Admin GOP Spokesperson Ashley Phelps.
Story coming.
— Chris Marquette (@ChrisMarquette_) October 6, 2020
New: All but one member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is now self-quarantining due to exposure at multiple meetings in recent days, including a meeting in Pentagon’s secure meeting space for classified information known as ‘the tank’, a defense official tells @barbarastarrcnn
— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) October 6, 2020
“Today, we have learned they are even refusing contact tracing help from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. All of that makes it tough to know who else might have been exposed last week,” Blitzer pointed out, referring to the White House. “It was reckless what was going on clearly in the Rose Garden with the announcement of the Supreme Court nominee and we saw what happened there. How reckless from your perspective as a former national security adviser is all of this?”
“It’s mind boggling in its callousness and recklessness,” Rice said in a blunt condemnation. “Never in my knowledge and my memory have we had a President of the United States who literally doesn’t give a damn about anybody around him, perhaps about himself, at least his health. He seems to care about power and wealth. And it’s just unbelievable. He doesn’t care who he infects. He doesn’t care what this does for our economy, now that he is, you know, completely thrown the white flag on trying to get new stimulus package and Covid legislation through. He doesn’t care about the American people. It’s unbelievable. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I think we all need to see care taken by our senior most leaders,” Rice added. I’m concerned, for example, not only with the president’s reckless behavior. “The callous disregard among those leaders for their responsibility of office is really quite extraordinary. I have much greater confidence that others in the line of succession, particularly Speaker Pelosi, is trying to do her best to protect herself. We can’t just shut down entirely but when you have people who have been immediately exposed as the vice president has been to the president and as many others have been to the president, it is their responsibility, according to CDC guidelines, to quarantine and they seem not to care about that. I think the model we should look to is what the Pentagon leadership is doing. They are responsibly responding.”
Watch the video above, via CNN.
