Trump attacks Obama, Biden over swine flu after calling for unity in coronavirus pandemic
President Trump is lashing out at former President Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden after calling for unity in the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump in a tweet on Thursday night attacked "Sleepy Joe Biden" for the Obama administration's response to the swine flu, suggesting his own administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic is drawing high approval ratings. On Friday morning, an ABC News poll found a majority of Americans, 54 percent, disapprove of Trump's response to the coronavirus pandemic compared to 43 percent who approve.
Trump in his tweet suggested he has a 78 percent approval rating on his coronavirus response, but the poll he cites was conducted in February prior to the first death in the U.S. from the novel coronavirus, CNN's Daniel Dale notes. It found that 77 percent of Americans were confident in the federal government's ability to handle a coronavirus outbreak, not mentioning Trump.
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On Friday morning, Trump also lashed out at the CDC for doing "nothing about" its testing system and again attacked the Obama administration over the swine flu, calling their response a "full scale disaster" and claiming Obama "made changes that only complicated things further" when it comes to testing.
Trump had previously been placing blame on Obama amid scrutiny over the amount of coronavirus tests being made available in the United States, recently claiming the former president "made a decision on testing that turned out to be very detrimental." CNN writes that "there is no Obama-era decision or rule that impeded coronavirus testing. The Obama administration did put forward a draft proposal related to lab testing, but it was never implemented."
The Washington Post notes that Trump's tweets swiping Obama and Biden came after his Wednesday Oval Office address, during which he said now is the time to "put politics aside, stop the partisanship, and unify together as one nation and one family."
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