A former National Security Council official shot down claims that the Trump administration cut the White House pandemic response office.
In an op-ed published in the Washington Post on Monday, the former senior director for counterproliferation and biodefense at the NSC, Tim Morrison, objected to an argument made by another former NSC director, Beth Cameron. Cameron asserted that the president unnecessarily closed the office under her watch, but Morrison said the claim is merely a political narrative crafted by Democrats.
“This is Washington. It’s an election year. Officials out of power want back into power after November. But the middle of a worldwide health emergency is not the time to be making tendentious accusations,” Morrison wrote.
“It is true that the Trump administration has seen fit to shrink the NSC staff. But the bloat that occurred under the previous administration clearly needed a correction,” he continued.
Morrison explained that “one such move at the NSC was to create the counterproliferation and biodefense directorate, which was the result of consolidating three directorates into one, given the obvious overlap between arms control and nonproliferation, weapons of mass destruction terrorism, and global health and biodefense.”
He added, “It is this reorganization that critics have misconstrued or intentionally misrepresented. If anything, the combined directorate was stronger because related expertise could be commingled.”
Morrison, who testified during the House’s impeachment hearings last year, later argued that the United States should combat the political narrative promulgated by Democrats, saying he feels it stems from propaganda disseminated from China.
“They are not only campaigning against the use of the term ‘Wuhan virus‘ (a more geographically accurate description than ‘Spanish flu’ ever was about the 1918 pandemic) but now also promoting the false claim that COVID-19 was created by the U.S. Army. Public health officials have pinpointed a wild-animal market in Wuhan as the outbreak’s origin,” he said.
The former official’s denial follows the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention objection to other claims made by congressional Democrats. Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer and Chris Murphy have claimed that the Trump administration slashed funding for the CDC pandemic programs. However, the agency told an independent, nonprofit fact-checker that such claims were untrue because Congress later provided additional funding for global health programs.
“CDC did not have to cut back its work from 49 to 10 countries,” said Maureen Bartee, CDC’s associate director for Global Health Security. “In the FY18-FY20 annual appropriations, CDC received base appropriations for global health security from Congress. This was used to continue the essential public health capacity development in the four core areas that was started in 2014 with the one-time supplemental funds.”
“With this regional approach, CDC intends to implement a sustainable, long-term overseas operational structure, expand the reach of its technical assistance and programs, and strengthen disease outbreak response,” she said. “All told, CDC is currently working in more than 60 countries.”
