Mike Bloomberg on Trump’s Coronavirus Response: Obama Was ‘Much Better Prepared’

Presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Friday, claiming then-President Barack Obama was “much better prepared” during the 2014 Ebola outbreak than President Trump is during the coronavirus threat.

A partial transcript is as follows:

HUNT: Do you trust, and should Americans trust, President Trump to deal with this crisis?

BLOOMBERG: No. He has not prepared for a crisis like this, quite the contrary. He fired the pandemic specialist two years ago. He’s defunded or unfunded or reduced the funding for Centers for Disease Control. He’s had 1600 scientists leave the government in the first two years of his office.

KASIE HUNT: Do you think President Obama did a better job handling Ebola than President Trump has done so far?

MIKE BLOOMBERG: I don’t know how you answer that. I can tell you President Obama had in place teams like I just described, so he was much better prepared. Sometimes, a lot of this stuff is luck. It either hits or it doesn’t. You go left, and you should have gone right, or you went left, and that was the right way to go. I think Obama had a much greater understanding that you can’t do everything by yourself.