Klobuchar, at Fox News town hall, dings Trump on coronavirus, rips cost of Sanders’ proposals

Calling for a "return to sanity" in foreign and domestic policy, Amy Klobuchar hoped to revitalize her struggling presidential campaign at a Fox News Channel town hall in Raleigh, N.C. Thursday evening, just ahead of Saturday's South Carolina primary and the 14 key Super Tuesday races next week.

Near the bottom in the polls in South Carolina, Klobuchar came out swinging at both President Trump and Democratic frontrunner Bernie Sanders. She charged that the White House hasn't done enough to contain the coronavirus outbreak, minutes after a whistleblower surfaced alleging that The Department of Health and Human Services may have recklessly exposed its own workers to the deadly virus.

"This is such a serious matter," Klobuchar said, insisting that she wanted people to "take the politics out of it." Within seconds, though, she attacked President Trump for proposing to cut funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) -- funding reductions that haven't taken effect.

"I just don't think we can isolate ourselves from the rest of the world," Klobuchar said. "I believe in science, I believe in not silencing health professionals." She added: "We're gonna have to have the funding on a federal level. The president hasn't really proposed an amount."

Specifically, Klobuchar said she "thought that was a very messy situation with the 14 people off the cruise that we later found out they were infected and they ended up on the plane. ... That should've been handled differently."

Pressed by Fox News' Bret Baier about where she stood on a widely panned op-ed in The New York Times saying coronavirus should be called "Trumpvirus," Klobuchar demurred: "I think there's a lot of frustration there with not requesting the funding. ... I think you're seeing that bubbling up. He said $1 billion, but Congress thinks it should be $8 billion, but then she said Congress should decide."