Former US president Barack Obama delivered a blistering critique of the incumbent administration’s response to the coronavirus outbreak. He described it as a “chaotic disaster” in a private conference call with his colleagues.
The former president has largely preferred to keep out of fray even as many members of the Trump administration have blamed Obama for various problems related to having sufficient resources to curb the coronavirus pandemic.
His remarks were made while encouraging the former staff to rally behind Democratic candidate Joe Biden. Meanwhile, in response to Obama’s remarks, White House said that Trump’s unprecedented and timely response to the outbreak had saved thousands of lives.
More:
On Friday, during the call with around 3,000 members of the Obama alumni association, he urged the staff to work for Biden’s presidential campaign to make sure that he unseats Trump in November presidential elections. He went on to blame the policy adopted by the Republican president to combat the virus and partly blamed the government for a rapid surge in cases and fatalities.
Obama also criticized the recent decision to drop the criminal charges against Michael Flynn, the former National Security Advisor, who was accused of lying to the federal investigative agency.
The US is the worst-hit country by the pandemic outbreak, and it has recorded more than 1.3 million confirmed cases of coronavirus with nearly 78,000 fatalities as of Saturday. In a bid to curb the further spread, many states across the country imposed social distancing restrictions.
But as many states faced protests and residents called on the authorities to lift the restriction to revive the economic activity. States across the country are opening up and easing restrictions allowing people to come out of their homes. However, health experts have warned against lifting sanctions so early as they fear a new wave of infections can hit the country.
Trump’s response to the outbreak has oscillated. At the early stages of the outbreak, he downplayed the virus and maintained that it would disappear with time. But as the infections surged to an alarming level by mid-March, he recognized the severity of the crisis.
In April, the US president suggested to ingest the infected patients with disinfectants and said that it could be preventive. Health experts reacted strongly to irresponsible remarks, and it caused a huge controversy.
Recently, he announced that he would disband the White House coronavirus taskforce. However, later he said that it would continue and focus on reopening the American economy.
With an eye-to-eye with the re-election, Trump has been blasted as putting his political interests before human lives by pushing the states to reopen the beleaguered economy without any plan.
