President Trump called a reporter’s question “nasty” after she asked about the administration cutting its global health security team back in 2018.
After his Friday speech declaring the coronavirus pandemic a national emergency, a journalist asked why Trump wouldn’t “take responsibility” for the crisis despite the response team being dismantled during John Bolton’s tenure as national security adviser.
“Well, I just think it’s a nasty question,” Trump responded before pointing to measures the administration has put in place after the COVID-19 outbreak that have “saved thousands of lives.”
“I mean, you say we did that. I don’t know anything about it,” he added.
“You don’t know about the reorganization that happened at the National Security Council?” PBS News Hour reporter Yamiche Alcindor questioned as the president spoke over her.
“It’s the administration, perhaps they do that, let people go. You used to be with a different newspaper than you are now, you know things like that happen,” Trump said before Alcindor’s microphone was cut off.
In May 2018, Bolton reorganized the NSC in an effort to streamline it. As part of that reorganization, Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer, the top White House official responsible for pandemic response, was let go, and the team he oversaw was dismantled.
Earlier during Friday’s Rose Garden press conference, Trump was asked if he takes responsibility for the lack of initial testing capabilities.
“No, I don’t take responsibility at all because we were given a set of circumstances, and we were given rules, regulations, and specifications from a different time. It wasn’t meant for this kind of an event,” the president said.
Sen. Sherrod Brown said he sent Trump a letter at the time of Ziemer’s departure raising questions about the reorganization. The Ohio Democrat posted a copy of the letter to Twitter on Friday after the president’s news conference. He said it was untrue that Trump was not aware of the team’s dissolution.
“I wrote to you more than 600 days ago demanding answers after you fired the entire White House pandemic team,” Brown said.
Not true, @realDonaldTrump. I wrote to you more than 600 days ago demanding answers after you fired the entire White House pandemic team. https://t.co/ICbHOkyeyY pic.twitter.com/71OF9gKA3N
— Sherrod Brown (@SenSherrodBrown) March 13, 2020
The main focus of Trump’s speech was the declaration of a national emergency to free up federal funds to combat the pandemic. Trump announced a monthlong travel ban on countries from Europe earlier this week.
There have been almost 1,900 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus and 41 deaths in the United States. Worldwide, that number has ballooned to more than 137,000 infections and more than 5,000 deaths, most of which are concentrated in mainland China, where the illness originated.
