Fox News host Steve Hilton said ineptitude at the top levels of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was partially to blame for shutdowns in the United States that have led to one of the worst financial crises in decades in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
“The reason we couldn’t contain the outbreak and had to shut down our economy was because we didn’t have tests that worked right at the start,” Hilton said Sunday. “Who screwed that up? No, not the evil Trump, but the saintly public sector CDC, the technocrats. Again, has there ever been a more catastrophic case of technocrat bungling?”
Hilton went a step further, calling for CDC Director Robert Redfield to be removed from his post.
“Why is this man, by the way, still in his job?” Hilton asked. “Dr. Death and Destruction, Robert Redfield of the CDC. Now we do have testing; it’s because Trump got rid of regulation so the private sector could do it.”
Hilton placed blame for a national shortage of personal protective medical equipment and adequate virus testing at the feet of Redfield and other federal officials.
“Why were we running around desperately trying to get ventilators and PPE and whatever? Because the technocrat geniuses shipped manufacturing overseas and let other countries control the supplies,” he said.
Top aides to President Trump have also been critical of the CDC in the wake of the pandemic.
“Early on in this crisis, the CDC, which really had the most trusted brand around the world in this space, really let the country down with the testing. Because not only did they keep the testing within the bureaucracy, they had a bad test. And that did set us back,” said White House trade adviser Peter Navarro Sunday on Meet the Press. “The fact of the matter is, and what President Trump realized early on is, that if you lock people down, you may save lives directly from the China virus. But you indirectly, you’re gonna kill a lot more people.”
