WATCH: Trump Defended Gutting Public Health Agencies Like the Pandemic Team Weeks Ago

President Donald Trump denied knowing about cuts made to The White House pandemic office when questioned by PBS’s Yamiche Alcindor on Friday, but a video from last month shows him defending his cuts to public health agencies.

During a Covid-19 press conference on Friday, Alcindor asked Trump, “You said that you don’t take responsibility, but you did disband the White House pandemic office, and the officials that were working in that office left this administration abruptly. So what responsibility do you take to that?”

“You say we did that, I don’t know anything about it,” Trump responded, calling the question “nasty.”

In a February video that has emerged, however, a White House reporter asks Trump, “You have consistently called for enormous cuts to the CDC, the NIH, and the WHO. You’ve talked a lot today about how these professionals are excellent, are critical, are necessary. Does this experience give you pause about those cuts?”

“No,” the president answered. “We can get money, we can increase staff — we know all the people. This is a question I asked the doctors before. Some of the people we cut, they haven’t used for many, many years, and if we have ever need them we can get them very, very quickly. And rather than spending the money — I’m a business person.

“I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them,” he said. “When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.”

Watch above.