On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Last Word,” 2020 Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden said “Trump was praising the Chinese government and downplaying the threat to the American people” and is now “trying to play this China card.”
Biden stated, “Well, first of all, the president got it wrong from the beginning, absolutely missed any opportunity to get ahead of this. You know, back in January, I think it was the 27, when he was saying this — praising China and talking about it not being a problem. We had put together in our administration an office within the White House to deal with future pandemics. They had been briefed on it. They meaning the incoming administration. We had over 44, if I’m not mistaken, people from the CDC in China, in China to observe what was going on. The president brought home the vast majority of them, I think left only four in place. I kept — I wrote an article back in, I think, the 27 of January saying, we — there’s — a pandemic is coming. we should insist on being in China to see for ourselves what was happening so we could be prepared. The president said, no, no, they’re doing a great job. This — all this is going — everything is fine.”
He continued, “And so, the thing that I’d be doing is resetting that pandemic office in place, number one, making sure we had the CDC, like we did in our administration, forward-based around the world, so we could see these things coming. Because there will be more coming. The truth is, Trump was praising the Chinese government and downplaying the threat to the American people as I said — as I was warning of the need to get the people into China to see what was actually going on. And the Chinese government’s word — we squandered critical time. And so, I just don’t — and now he’s trying to play this China card.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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