Great job by Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA11), who earlier this week ripped the Trump administration’s politicization of coronavirus, including Trump wearing a campaign hat (!) at the CDC. Rep. Connolly added, “And all of your words and sanctimony will not cover up the fact that this administration was not prepared for this crisis, and it put lives at risk – American lives at risk.”
“Some of my friends on the other side of the aisle, including the ranking member, began sanctimoniously to say we don’t want to politicize this issue – too important. Well, we didn’t politicize the fact that the global health and security and biodefense desk at the National Security Council was dismantled by this administration two years ago. We didn’t politicize the funding of…public health in the United States in budget at the budget that in fact made critical cuts, which we restored. We aren’t the ones that called the alarm being raised about this pandemic as ‘fake news’ – that came out of the President of the United States’ mouth – and no gaslighting is going to hide that.
And politicization; when the President of the United States finally did go down to CDC with you Dr. Redfield, he appeared wearing this hat – a campaign hat! – in the middle of a crisis. We will not be lectured about politicization. And all of your words and sanctimony will not cover up the fact that this administration was not prepared for this crisis, and it put lives at risk – American lives at risk. We didn’t have the tests we needed. We didn’t have the diagnostics we needed. The president made patently false assertions, which Dr. Fauci correctly corrected, about the development of the virus. In fact, he was more concerned about what was happening on the stock market than he seemed to be concerned about American public health. And that’s shameful and you can’t cover that up. And we will not be silent, nor will we be intimidated, by charges of politicization in pointing it out, because lives are at stake…”
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