Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris are claiming that Biden would have handled the pandemic better, and that President Donald Trump has done a poor job, leading to our country’s current economic and social problems.
Let us examine Biden’s claims:
– Biden managed past “pandemics.” Biden was vice president during two diseases: H1N1 swine flu in 2009 and Ebola in 2014. He failed at both. During H1N1, Biden caused panic by telling people to stay off airplanes and trains, such that the White House had to walk back his comments. The administration refused to issue travel bans.
• Obama-Biden created a pandemic response office that Trump eliminated. As former National Security Council official Tim Morrison explained, the office was not dissolved, but reorganized to make it more effective and staffers were reassigned to the counterproliferation and biodefense directorate.
• Biden warned about the pandemic. Biden published an op-ed in USA Today on Jan. 27 claiming that Trump had not prepared the U.S. for a pandemic, the same day that the Trump administration formed the White House coronavirus task force.
• Biden would have trusted the experts, unlike Trump. Trump has trusted medical and scientific experts throughout the pandemic—including Dr. Anthony Fauci. And even Fauci says that Trump listens to his advice.
• Biden would have sent the CDC to China. Biden claimed in the South Carolina debate that he, unlike Trump, would have sent American experts into China. But U.S. officials had already visited China three days before.
• Biden would have invoked the Defense Production Act. Biden has repeatedly made false claims about when he called for the Defense Production Act to be used to force companies to manufacture medical supplies. In fact, he only called for the Act to be invoked on March 18—after Trump had done so the same day.
• Biden would have brought leaders together. Biden says that he would bring the nation’s leaders together to fight the pandemic. Instead of offering support to the president, Biden used COVID-19 to score political points. In a speech March 12, Biden slammed Trump—even though most of the policies he recommended for the country were things the administration was doing already.
Next week, we will examine Trump’s response.
Lawrence Weisdorn