Trump struggles to explain why he disbanded his global health team

Anybody fit to be president would know that such things will happen. They will be worse if we are not prepared ahead of time.

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trump-struggles-explain-why-he-disbanded-his-global-health-team-n1153221?cid=sm_fb_maddow&fbclid=IwAR3Qu6wvbqeHZsNl3hnfnwlEOebXTkuBnjJDTUjaEYjMuVHtHf70weKBaNk

March 9, 2020, 11:20 AM EDT
By Steve Benen

One of Donald Trump's most important missteps in dealing with the coronavirus outbreak happened before anyone had even heard of COVID-19. In fact, the president's first error came back in 2018.

It was two years ago when Trump ordered the shutdown of the White House National Security Council's entire global health security unit. NBC News had a good report on this recently, noting that the president's decision "to downsize the White House national security staff -- and eliminate jobs addressing global pandemics -- is likely to hamper the U.S. government's response to the coronavirus."

It was against this backdrop that a reporter asked Trump late last week about whether he was prepared to "rethink having an Office of Pandemic Preparation in the White House." The president replied:

"I just think this is something, Peter, that you can never really think is going to happen.

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It's worth emphasizing that this is Trump's second explanation related to his decision to disband his global health security team. "I'm a business person," he explained two weeks ago in response to a similar question. "I don't like having thousands of people around when you don't need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly."

As it turns out, the administration cannot actually reassemble such a team "very quickly," though Trump, still unfamiliar with how much of the executive branch works, may not have known that.

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as the New York Times noted overnight that President Barack Obama established the Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense at the National Security Council after the 2014 Ebola outbreak, making clear that some folks were acutely aware of possibilities like these.

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