While the coronavirus spreads throughout the country, government officials are trying to figure out why the government’s initial response was slow.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) suggested that Congressional Democrats’ impeachment effort distracted President Donald Trump in late-January and early-February.
But, on Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) claimed that McConnell’s suggestion proves that Trump “cannot handle the job.”
“I think that’s an admission that perhaps the president and the majority leader cannot handle the job. We have a life-and-death situation in our country, and they should not try to hide behind an excuse for why they did not take action.”
“But, it does admit that they did not take action,” Pelosi added before calling for Trump and McConnell to work with Congressional Democrats to “get the job done.”
Watch the video below:
Speaker Pelosi on Mitch McConnell suggesting that impeachment distracted the US government from coronavirus in China: “We have a life-and-death situation in our country, and they should not try to hide behind an excuse for why they did not take action." https://t.co/Hi8RwWBWkA pic.twitter.com/9XFvyyKFOQ
— CNN News Central (@NewsCentralCNN) April 1, 2020
During an interview with Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday, McConnell suggested that the impeachment was responsible for a delayed coronavirus response.
“It came up while we were tied down on the impeachment trial,” McConnell said, adding, “And I think it diverted the attention of the government because everything every day was all about impeachment.”
While McConnell blamed impeachment for the delayed coronavirus response, Dr. Deborah Birx said that the information that came out of China about the virus was really to blame.
“I mean I was overseas when this happened, in Africa, and I think when you look at the China data, originally, and you said, ‘Oh well, there’s 80 million people, or 20 million people in Wuhan and 80 million people in Hubei,’ and they come up with the number of 50,000, you start thinking of this more like SARS than you do this kind of global pandemic.”
“So, I think the medical community interpreted the Chinese data as this was serious but smaller than anyone expected because I think probably we were missing a significant amount of the data now,” she added.