- President Donald Trump on Monday said he wouldn't have called for former President Barack Obama's resignation after over 160,000 people in the US died to the coronavirus.
- "No, I wouldn't have done that," Trump said. "I think it's been amazing what we've been able to do."
- In 2014, a few weeks before the first travel-associated case of Ebola was diagnosed in the US, Trump suggested that Obama should resign.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
President Donald Trump on Monday said he wouldn't have called for Barack Obama's resignation after over 160,000 people in the US died to the coronavirus.
Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump suggested he wouldn't blame Obama if he was leading the country through one of the worst pandemics in modern history.
"No, I wouldn't have done that," Trump said. "I think it's been amazing what we've been able to do."
"If we didn't close up our country, we would've had one-and-a-half or two million people already dead," Trump added. "We've called it right, now we don't have to close it. We understand the disease. Nobody understood it because nobody's seen anything like this."
Trump's comments mark the rare occasion in which he declined to blame his predecessor for his widely criticized response to the coronavirus.
When Trump was still a reality TV star and real estate mogul as a private citizen, he repeatedly attacked Obama over an array of issues — including how the former president approached the 2014 Ebola outbreak. At the time, Trump described Obama as a "delusional failure" over his approach to Ebola, and alleged that Obama was making the problem "much worse than it needs to be in the US."
Just 11 people were treated for Ebola in the US during the 2014-2016 epidemic.
In September 2014, a few weeks before the first travel-associated case of Ebola was diagnosed in the US, Trump in a tweet suggested that Obama should resign.
"If Obama resigns from office NOW, thereby doing a great service to the country—I will give him free lifetime golf at any one of my courses!" Trump tweeted at the time.
Over 5 million people in the US have been diagnosed with the coronavirus and over 163,000 people have died as of Monday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Join the conversation about this story »
https://ift.tt/2F94ClD