Former President Barack Obama slammed the Trump administration’s coronavirus response as an “an absolute chaotic disaster.”
Mr. Obama’s comments came Friday night while privately talking to ex-members of his administration. A tape of the conversation was leaked to Yahoo News, which first reported the former president’s comments Saturday morning.
He said the disorganization was part of the reason he plans to campaign “as hard as I can” for Democratic presidential candidate and his former vice president Joe Biden.
“This election that’s coming up on every level is so important because what we’re going to be battling is not just a particular individual or a political party,” he said. “What we’re fighting against is these long-term trends in which being selfish, being tribal, being divided, and seeing others as an enemy — that has become a stronger impulse in American life.”
“It would have been bad even with the best of governments. It has been an absolute chaotic disaster when that mindset — of ‘what’s in it for me’ and ‘to heck with everybody else’ — when that mindset is operationalized in our government.”
It was the same conversation where he criticized the Justice Department for dropping charges against President Trump’s ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn.
