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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made a rare claim on Thursday night. He admitted that Obama was right and that he was wrong.
McConnell recently claimed that the Obama administration did not leave behind a plan to help deal with a pandemic. However, he backtracked on his statement on Thursday night.
“I was wrong. They did leave behind a plan. So, I clearly made a mistake in that regard,” said McConnell during an interview with Bret Baier on Fox News.
This concession came after he falsely accused the Obama administration of not leaving the Trump administration “any kind of game plan” for a pandemic. He said this during a Trump campaign online chat with the President’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump.
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During the Trump campaign online chat on Monday, McConnell said, “They claim pandemics only happen once every hundred years. But, what if that’s no longer true? We want to be early. Ready for the next one. Because clearly, the Obama administration did not leave to this administration any kind of game plan for something like this.”
However, it was revealed that former President Barack Obama’s White House National Security Council did leave behind a detailed document on how to respond to a pandemic.
Politico revealed the document in March, which is titled the “Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents.”
The playbook includes advice on what questions to ask. Which federal agencies are responsible for what and decisions that should be made. It also includes sample documents for officials to use during inter-agency meetings. It explicitly lists novel coronaviruses as a type of pathogen that could require a major response.
Additionally, an in-person pandemic response exercise was led by senior Obama officials for incoming senior Trump officials in January 2017. This was required by a new law that Obama signed in 2016 to improve presidential transitions.
Obama described the coronavirus response by the Trump administration last week as “an absolute chaotic disaster.” He said this during a private call with people who used to work with him in the White House.
However, on Thursday McConnell said, “As to whether or not the plan was followed and who’s the critic and all the rest, I don’t have an observation about that because I don’t know enough about the details of that to comment on it in any detail.”
I don’t know about you, but maybe McConnell should enjoy a little home brew coffee and learn about the details involved before making that kind of statement.
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