President Donald Trump's bungled response to the pandemic that's killed over 80 thousand Americans is only more outrageous considering that his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, left a detailed playbook on how to prepare for a pandemic of this scale.
According to reports, the playbook was thrown onto a shelf and ignored. This was in addition to Trump ousting the entire pandemic response team and slashing the budgets for pandemic preparedness.
We've known for months about the pandemic playbook's existence, despite lies from Republicans like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) claiming it never existed.
But it's only recently that Trump's administration gave its latest reason for ignoring the book.
Watch below.
Trump and Kayleigh McEnany are now trying to dismiss the pandemic response plan Obama left for Trump as a mere "pap… https://t.co/zQfVduZUrK— Aaron Rupar (@Aaron Rupar) 1589475160.0
Trump brought up his latest press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, who brandished the Obama plan, which was on unbound printed paper, before holding up Trump's plan, which they'd put in a binder.
McEnany said:
"The Obama/Biden plan that has been referenced was insufficient, wasn't going to work. So what our administration did under the leadership of President Trump was do an entire 2018 pandemic preparedness report. Beyond that we did a whole exercise on pandemic preparedness in August of last year, and had an entire after action report put together. In other words, the Obama/Biden paper packet was superseded by a President Trump style pandemic preparedness response book."
Trump echoed the claims with his usual praise words:
"Which was much better, which was much more complete and which was a lot tougher. We were given very little when we came in to this administration and they've done a fantastic job."
But if the so-called Trump plan was so much more superior, the administration has even less of an excuse for the bungled testing rollout, the shortage of personal protective equipment, the skyrocketing unemployment rate, the shuttered businesses, and the 80+ thousand dead Americans resulting from Trump's repeated dismissal of the virus in its earliest and most crucial stages.
That Kayleigh McEnany thought she could put the Trump plan in a binder to make it look more thorough was laughable.
And laugh people did.
So McEnany’s approach to deflecting on their lack of preparedness is basically to print out the Obama plan on paper… https://t.co/x3DLVQzM8Y— Mehdi Hasan (@Mehdi Hasan) 1589482481.0
See...they used staples and we have these binders. https://t.co/yvkqyAfhWP— Rory Cooper (@Rory Cooper) 1589477443.0
@atrupar 'OURS IS BETTER BECAUSE WE PUT IT IN A BINDER!'— Matt Rogers 🎙️ (@Matt Rogers 🎙️) 1589475342.0
The Fake President is reduced to waving binders in the air to prove months later that he had a Pandemic "Plan"! WTF… https://t.co/RWIfeNCgYC— Dan Pereira (@Dan Pereira) 1589483773.0
You see, the Trump plan is better than the Obama plan because the Trump Plan has nifty plastic binders while the O… https://t.co/Q2FgS6GghH— Peter Sagal (@Peter Sagal) 1589481889.0
Do they really expect us to believe they've been following a detailed plan this whole time and are just now mentioning it?
So wait, after months of saying that "no one could have seen this coming," now they are saying, "we did see it comi… https://t.co/CM4ErmFdKr— Ronald Klain (@Ronald Klain) 1589482178.0
Three months into the crisis, Trump is now suddenly claiming that he had his own pandemic “plan.” Did he read it?… https://t.co/xZLgSryDPu— Chris Lu (@Chris Lu) 1589478483.0
Trump thinks it makes him look better to claim he had his own pandemic response plan that was much, much better tha… https://t.co/VAlNkB5pIO— Mark Jacob (@Mark Jacob) 1589482978.0
On top of the detailed playbook they shelved, we also left them the NSC pandemic response office and the PREDICT pr… https://t.co/RsvDUVm5ZF— Andrew Bates (@Andrew Bates) 1589481929.0
Unbelievable.
For a deeper look into Trump's ineptitude, check out A Very Stable Genius, available here.