On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Wolf,” host Wolf Blitzer sat down with Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) to ask her if she could confirm a Saturday report from The New York Times that claimed President Barack Obama was “seething” at administration officials for their handling of the Ebola response.
After replaying a clip of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) calling for greater presidential leadership on the Ebola response, Blitzer asked Jackson Lee if she had been in touch with the White House.
“You probably saw that story in The New York Times on Saturday saying the president was, quote, ‘seething’ because he thought that his team did not do, initially, a good job, especially when that Liberian showed up at the Dallas hospital and the fallout that followed after that.”
“Have you been in touch with the White House?” Blitzer asked. “Was the President seething at his aides?”
“Well, let me say this, the President is a perfectionist,” Jackson Lee began. “He’s had a mountain of trials and tribulations from international to domestic. He wants the American people protected and I would venture to say that he was clearly not happy with the response that should have been more immediate.”
Jackson Lee then criticized Cruz for his call for greater leadership from the President, saying her “good friend” from Texas “just needs to read a little more.”
“Now, the president, let me say to my good friend, the senator from Texas, just needs to read a little more,” she said. “The president was front and center issuing immediate help and support to the infected areas in Liberia and Senegal, Sierra Leone and Guinea and at one time Nigeria, or course Senegal and Nigeria are Ebola-free. But he was on top of it from the perspective of stopping it at its source, because he desires to have our citizens protected, he was not happy, and none of were happy.”
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