House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC) said Thursday on MSNBC’s “MTP Daily” that we may need a 9/11-style commission to study the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Anchor Chuck Todd said, “Right now, you are doing some oversight. You are leading the oversight on what’s happening with government funds and things like this, but you’re also discovering a lot of troubling things. That’s what came out of your committee, this herd immunity attempt email. We’ve also got what we’ve learned from those CDC staffers who spoke with The New York Times. Do you believe we need a 9/11-style commission, the Iraq study group, Warren Commission, you name it? Great crises have gotten us important commissions to make sure we don’t make the same mistakes again. Do we need this?”
Clyburn said, “We may. And I think that that’s something the new administration may need to take a look at. My committee, however, is to provide oversight. When Congress makes the expenditures, as they’ve done here, my select committee is to take a hard look at how the money is being spent to make sure that it’s being done efficiently, effectively, and equitably. That’s what we’re doing. And it was in the course of carrying out these responsibilities is when we saw these — or heard the testimonies and now seen some documents that indicate that what the White House was saying was totally different from what was going on. And we have found that to be the case in other instances as well. They were sending information out to state governments saying one thing, while at the national level, they were saying just the opposite. That’s the way this administration has operated. And so what we’re doing in the Select Committee is having the public take a look-see at what this administration is doing, and hopefully, we’ll do what we can to correct it.”
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