Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday that she believes President Donald Trump has done very little to help with preventing the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus. In fact, she believes he's "fiddling" with making important decisions.
"President Trump is considering relaxing federal guidelines for the coronavirus for some of the lesser infected parts of the country. Do you think he should?" Tapper asked.
Pelosi referenced the number of people – roughly 2,000 – who have died as a result of the virus.
"This is such a very, very sad time for us so we should be taking every precaution. His denial at the beginning was deadly. His delaying of getting equipment to ... where it's needed is deadly and now I think the best thing to do is prevent more loss of life rather than open things up because we just don't know," she explained. "We have to have testing, testing, testing. That's what we said from the start."
According to the speaker, it's too early to determine whether or not it would be risky to reopen other parts of the country.
"I don't know what the scientists are saying to him. I don't know what the scientists said to him. When did this president know about this and what did he know?" Pelosi asked. "What did he know and when did he know it? That's for an after-action review but as the president fiddles, people are dying and we just have to take every precaution."
Nancy Pelosi has a lot of nerve. President Trump halted all flights from China at the end of January. And what did Democrats do? They continually chided him for making the decision, especially because he went against the World Health Organization's recommendations.
A bipartisan, bicameral agreement was made on a Wuhan coronavirus relief package and what happened at the last hour? Pelosi came in and blew the whole thing up. Instead of focusing on relief for Americans across the country, she was hellbent on pushing a far-left agenda. She wanted to attach non-coronavirus-related items to the bill, like offsetting airline emissions by 2025, upping the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour and providing a bailout for the United States Postal Service.
The lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) has been a major issue across the country. We continually hear about how places across the nation – but New York City in particular – is in dire need of PPE and ventilators. But NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio failed to act in a timely manner. Eight of the 10 times the city could have ordered masks from the supplier, the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) missed the payment deadline.
If we're going to talk about shortages of things like PPE, we need to look at the whole picture and not just part of it. What role did these state governors play? What about local governments? Who was responsible for making sure this equipment was in stock and available? And how much of this is a lack of preparation verses the system being completely overwhelmed?
Those are questions we won't receive the answer to until this pandemic is over and we can really comb through the details. The one thing that's certain right now: Americans are confident in President Trump's leadership throughout the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic thus far.
.@SpeakerPelosi says the President downplaying the severity of #coronavirus is “deadly."
— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) March 29, 2020
“As the President fiddles, people are dying. We just have to take every precaution.” #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/y8bFNbaPJy