Dems Misconstrue Trump Budget Remarks
After President Donald Trump said, “I don’t know anything about” the disbanding of a White House pandemic response office, the Democrats claimed that he “lied” and pointed to Trump’s earlier remarks about “some of the people we cut” as evidence. But those remarks were in response to a question about proposed budget cuts — not the anti-pandemic team in question.
Several Democrats have criticized the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus outbreak by pointing to the dissolving of a team within the White House’s National Security Council dedicated to coordinating a response to a pandemic. As we’ve written before, in 2018, the administration did eliminate a key position that would have been involved in such a response — the senior director of the NSC’s Office of Global Health Security and Biodefense. But that doesn’t mean the responsibilities of that office were eliminated.
Administration officials have described a reorganization or streamlining of the NSC. An NSC spokesman told the Washington Post in May 2018 that the administration “will continue to address these issues with the same resolve under the new structure.”
Some still have been critical of the elimination of the post or a separate global health team. For instance, the Center for Strategic & International Studies restoring the position on the NSC as one of seven key changes to better protect the American public from global health threats.
