McConnell’s claim that Obama left behind no ‘game plan’ for the coronavirus outbreak
Facts And Fact Checking,Barack Obama,Mitch McConnell,White House,Coronavirus,Domestic Policy,COVID-19 Misinformation,Healthcare
“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.”
— Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), in an online discussion hosted by the Trump campaign, May 11, 2020
There is little continuity in the top levels of the U.S. government when one political party replaces the presidential administration led by another. The natural inclination is to ignore much of the work left behind by the previous folks — and to reinvent the wheel all over again.
But former Obama administration officials cried foul after McConnell’s comments. “We literally left them a 69-page Pandemic Playbook.... that they ignored,” tweeted Ron Klain, the former “Ebola czar” in the Obama administration.
What’s going on?
The Facts: Klain is referring to a 40-page document (not counting appendixes) first revealed by Politico — a National Security Council staff playbook on fighting pandemics. Now, just about every war plan falls apart with the first battle, but a case could be made that there was certainly useful information in the playbook.
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