The Trump administration has faced significant criticism for their handling of the Coronavirus outbreak because of issues like major delays in the implementation of actual large-scale testing of Americans who might have the disease. This Wednesday at a White House roundtable with executives from airline companies, President Donald Trump blamed Barack Obama for the testing delays that have happened under Trump’s own watch. It’s not immediately clear what on earth Trump was talking about or what “evidence” he has for the claim that delays were — somehow! — Obama’s team’s fault, although it’s clear that Trump was as off-his-rocker as ever, because Trump also “jokingly” wished he could touch his own face more freely.
He commented:
‘The Obama administration made a decision on testing that turned out to be very detrimental to what we’re doing, and we undid that decision a few days ago so that testing can take place in a much more accurate and rapid fashion. That was a decision we disagreed with. I don’t think we would have made it, but for some reason it was made, but we’ve undone that decision?’
Watch:
Trump on coronavirus testing: "The Obama administration made a decision on testing that turned out to be very detrimental to what we're doing & we undid that decision a few days ago so that testing can take place in a much more accurate & rapid fashion" (what's he talking about?) pic.twitter.com/Z0UBaORIwI
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 4, 2020
Again — it’s unclear what on earth he’s actually talking about. It’s Trump’s own team that has eliminated White House positions meant for dealing with situations like the Coronavirus spread, including the White House global health security unit, which the president and then-national security adviser John Bolton eliminated in 2018. The fact that nowhere in his anti-Obama screed did Trump have a single apparent concrete detail about what on earth he was talking about underscores just how incompetent he really seems to be.
In fact, it was Trump and Bolton who eliminated the whole White House global health security unit for countering pandemics in 2018 https://t.co/H9dxJZhOXR https://t.co/qmIraJhx3Y
— Laura Rozen (@lrozen) March 4, 2020
Trump also addressed concerns about traveling while the Coronavirus continues to spread — which is what gave him the inroad to complain about supposedly not being able to touch his own face as much as he wanted.
He told reporters:
‘A lot of people are doing a lot of domestic business now. I can tell you, they’re staying in this country, because they feel safe, because if you look at a percentage, we have a very very small percentage, and a big percentage of what we have is when we brought in the forty or so people from the ship… Most of these people are getting better. Some are already released; some are going home; some are full one hundred percent reporting… but we have a very small number of people.’
The reason that there’s a small number of reported cases might be because of the outrageously low number of people that have actually been tested. Trump, forever all over the place, left that part out.
Trump went on:
‘I think for the most part, the media has treated us very fairly, which I appreciate. I think it’s very important… I haven’t touched my face in weeks. In weeks! I miss it.’
Watch:
President Trump while answering question on air travel in meeting with airline CEOs: "I haven't touched my face in weeks. I miss it."
Full video here: https://t.co/eOEzkkndmu pic.twitter.com/025xZtz4jI
— CSPAN (@cspan) March 4, 2020
In an ideal world, the president of the United States isn’t so self-centered that their chief concern is whether or not they can touch their face as freely as they’d like. As Trump goes off down that rabbit trail, affected Americans continue to grow in number — so far, there have been nine deaths from the virus in the country.
