White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany laid out the White House’s reasoning for replacing the Obama administration’s pandemic response plan during Friday’s press briefing.
“Some have erroneously suggested that the Trump administration threw out the pandemic response playbook left by the Obama-Biden administration,” McEnany said at the opening of the briefing. “What the critics fail to note however is that this thin packet of paper was replaced by two detailed robust pandemic response reports commissioned by the Trump administration.” (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Roger Stone Has A Message For President Trump)
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She added, “In 2018 the Trump administration issued our pandemic crisis action plan … Further from August 13th to the 16th, the Trump administration conducted the crimson contagion 2019 functional exercise. This was a pandemic simulation to test the nation’s ability to respond to a large-scale outbreak.”
“We refilled that stockpile and we got the N95 masks out, ventilators another good example, not a single American died for the lack of a ventilator,” the press secretary later told a reporter, “We have delivered. We cleaned up the mess that was very clearly left by President Obama.” (RELATED: Kayleigh McEnany Explains Why Republicans Are So Mad About Obamagate)
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States reached 1,435,945 Friday and the number of deaths reached 86,637, according to the Washington Post. Florida and Georgia are among the few states who have already begun the process of reopening their economies as other states, such as California, plan to remain in lockdown into at least June.
A Trump administration official told the Daily Caller, “Consistently the Democrats in Washington and many in the mainstream media have tried to paint the narrative that President Trump and his administration failed to prepare for the coronavirus pandemic, and consistently the evidence shows that under the President’s leadership we’ve responded quickly and effectively to bend the curve, save lives, and care for Americans everywhere.” (RELATED:California City To Allow Reopenings, Declares Itself A ‘Sanctuary City’ For Business)
Recently, the White House has been critical of the Obama administration after a revelation that members in Obama’s White House, including Former Vice President Joe Biden, had requested the unmasking of former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Now the White House is also bringing focus on the prior administration’s preparation for a possible pandemic.