Hillary Clinton misspoke while defending the Obama administration against criticism from President Trump, who claimed that his predecessor made it harder to quickly enact widespread testing for coronavirus.
Trump said in an interview last week that the Obama administration “didn’t do anything” as cases of swine flu increased in 2009 and 2010.
“The Obama administration made a decision on testing that turned out to be very detrimental to what we’re doing, and we undid that decision a few days ago so that the testing can take place in a much more accurate and rapid fashion,” Trump said in separate comments Wednesday.
In her response to Trump, Clinton mistakenly said the SARS epidemic, which happened in 2003, occurred when she was secretary of state. Clinton led the State Department from 2009 to 2013.
“I don’t think the facts support that assessment,” she told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on Sunday. “In fact, what we do know is that the SARS epidemic, which happened at the very beginning of the Obama administration, because I was secretary of state at the time, really was a full-court press by the administration to be sure that at every level, not only national, state, and local, but globally, the United States was part of the response.”
Clinton, 72, lost to Trump in the 2016 election and so far has not endorsed any candidate in the 2020 cycle.
A Hulu documentary about her life, Hillary, was released on Friday.
