By Daniel Dale, CNN
Updated 3:48 PM ET, Tue May 12, 2020
Washington (CNN)Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell falsely accused the Obama administration of failing to leave the Trump administration “any kind of game plan” for something like the coronavirus pandemic.
Appearing Monday in a Trump campaign online chat with Lara Trump, the President’s daughter-in-law and campaign senior adviser, McConnell slammed Obama for criticizing Trump’s coronavirus response as an “absolute chaotic disaster” on a private call last week with former staffers.
As Donald Trump has done repeatedly during the pandemic, McConnell also laid undeserved blame at Obama’s feet.
“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,” McConnell said.
“That’s exactly right,” Lara Trump responded.
It was the opposite of right.
Facts First: Obama’s White House National Security Council left the Trump administration a detailed document on how to respond to a pandemic. The document, whose existence was publicly revealed by Politico in March, is called the Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents.
“We literally left them a 69-page Pandemic Playbook…. that they ignored,” Ronald Klain, a campaign adviser to Democratic candidate Joe Biden and the former Obama administration Ebola response coordinator, wrote on Twitter.
The playbook — 40 pages plus appendices — contains step-by-step advice on questions to ask, decisions to make, and which federal agencies are responsible for what. It includes sample documents that officials could use for inter-agency meetings. And it explicitly lists novel coronaviruses as one of the kinds of pathogens that could require a major response.
The color-coded, checklist-style document addresses issues like testing, funding, personal protective equipment, emergency declarations, border control measures, diplomacy, the use of the military, public communication, even mortuary services.
Continued
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Article URL : https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/12/politics/fact-check-mcconnell-obama-trump-game-plan/index.html