President Donald Trump took to Twitter on Friday morning and attempted to blame — you guessed it, Barack Obama — for the federal government’s disastrous response to the coroanvirus outbreak.
…. Their response to H1N1 Swine Flu was a full scale disaster, with thousands dying, and nothing meaningful done to fix the testing problem, until now. The changes have been made and testing will soon happen on a very large scale basis. All Red Tape has been cut, ready to go!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 13, 2020
The Washington Post fact-checked Trump’s claims, giving them its highest “whopper” rating of Four Pinocchios: When things get tough in the Trump administration, the president has a default position — blame Barack Obama. The administration has been under fire for its failure to quickly expand testing for coronavirus across the United States; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had distributed flawed tests to state and local health departments. The lack of tests, compared with countries like South Korea that have tested tens of thousands of people, has meant the possible spread of the virus in the United States may be hidden. Trump suggested the problem instead was an “Obama rule” on testing that his administration had recently overturned. But this is completely wrong. … Trump is looking for scapegoats to excuse his administration’s sluggish efforts to expand testing. But he cannot blame Obama. There was no “Obama rule,” just draft guidance that never took effect and was withdrawn before Trump took office.
Here’s how Twitter reacted:
