Joe Biden Says Donald Trump Should Call Barack Obama For Help With Handling Coronavirus
Just one day after former President Barack Obama took a shot at Donald Trump‘s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, former Vice President Joe Biden suggested that the real estate mogul call his predecessor for advice, Breitbart reported.
“I think that it would be wise if the president — if Trump called President Obama,” Biden said to MSNBC’s Brian Williams during Tuesday’s edition of 11th Hour.
“I’m going to say something that sounds self-serving, but I think we handled the last pandemic very well. We handled the last economic crisis very well in an organizational structure, how we did it, what we did, who we put in charge, how it got done, where there was no waste of time and money.”
Biden is referring to the swine flu (H1N1) pandemic that lasted from January 2009 to August 2010. As reported by USA Today, Trump has blasted the Obama administration’s response to swine flu and claimed that the former president made changes to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that “complicated things.” He also accused the administration of turning the other way from the CDC’s purportedly problematic testing system, which the president claims was known to be inadequately prepared for a pandemic.
Hannity and Trump are talking about the Obama administration's response to H1N1 in 2009. That virus was less deadly and less contagious, but comparing contemporaneous reports of cases and deaths: pic.twitter.com/hS0YRwcoD3
— Philip Bump (@pbump) March 27, 2020
Despite Trump’s criticism, multiple reports have suggested the current administration failed to heed warnings about the dangers of a pandemic. A 2019 study by White House economists warned of the damage an influenza pandemic could cause, predicting that such a scenario could lead to approximately half a million deaths and $3.8 trillion in damages to the economy.
Biden has proposed his own plan to deal with coronavirus and offered critiques of the Trump administration’s approach. As reported by Fox News, Trump slammed Biden and the Obama administration earlier this month after the Democratic frontrunner revealed his plan, with the president highlighting that it killed “thousands of people.”
“The response was one of the worst on record,” Trump tweeted before claiming his administration’s is “one of the best.”
According to the CDC, approximately 12,469 people died from swine flu in the U.S. from April 12, 2009 to April 10, 2010. Thus far, more than 4,000 people have died from coronavirus in the U.S. The White House projects between 100,000 to 240,000 Americans could be killed by the disease, even with implementing proper social distancing measures.
In a rare display, Obama took to Twitter to speak out against Trump’s reaction to COVID-19 and urge Americans to vote him out of office in November. The former president also suggested that the Trump administration’s aversion to climate science can be linked to America’s purportedly inadequate response to the pandemic.
