Editorial: If the pandemic-preparedness cupboard was bare, it was Trump's doing
“We inherited a broken, terrible system …,” Trump
told reporters on April 18. “Our cupboards were bare. We had very little in our stockpile.” That was Trump’s attempt, frequently repeated by the president and
recycled in White House presentations, to lay responsibility for the inept pandemic response at Obama’s feet, as if three years in office were insufficient for Trump to repair all the supposed damage his predecessor wrought.
Except it’s a lie of colossal Trumpian proportions.
We’ve taken the time to dissect Centers for Disease Control and Prevention budgets from
the year before Obama left office all the way to the present. Trump can lie, by the numbers cannot. Obama left office with an unblemished record of building up the nation’s pandemic preparedness. Trump systematically sought to dismantle it.