Wednesday on CNN’s “Tonight,” former Obama administration National Security Adviser Susan Rice claimed President Donald Trump was “threatened by” former President Barack Obama’s “decency, family values.”
Rice said, “They were not focused on the reality a pandemic was going to happen sometime but could happen any time. That’s why they were so flat flatfooted. It didn’t accord with the president’s new trade deal with China, everything being honky dory, the stock market being high, et cetera. So they deflected and delays and didn’t take the months of January and February to prepare as they must. We have lost thousands of lives, and our economy is far worse off than it had otherwise been — had they been on this from day one.”
Lemon asked, “Why do you think he likes to make the former president the scapegoat and blame the former president and your administration on—for everything, really. Why is that?”
Rice said, “I can only assume and infer that President Trump has some extraordinary insecurity in relation to Barack Obama. Everything that Obama stood for, decency, family values, unity, a country that stood tall and proud, not by dividing but by uniting, is the antithesis of who Donald Trump is. And he’s clearly threatened by it. And he clearly likes to use Obama as a foil for all of these failures.”
She added, “But, you know, there is no covering up from the fact that this administration was not ready, wasn’t ready with the testing, wasn’t ready with the equipment, wasn’t ready with the orders to shut down the economy when that was necessary. And they’re making even bigger mistakes today as they give the governors and localities carte blanche to do whatever they want to do. He takes no responsibility. I mean, this is the thing, Don. Donald Trump says he takes no responsibility at all for anything. So you got to, therefore, blame somebody. If it’s not Obama, it’s China, the World Health organization or whomever, but the pattern is the same, it’s never his responsibility, even three-and-a-half years into his presidency.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN