President Trump said early Friday that he put the US “way ahead in our battle with Coronavirus” — and accused the “Do Nothing Democrats” of going out of their way to make the GOP look bad.
“The Do Nothing Democrats were busy wasting time on the Immigration Hoax, & anything else they could do to make the Republican Party look bad while I was busy calling early BORDER & FLIGHT closings, putting us way ahead in our battle with Coronavirus. Dems called it VERY wrong!” the president said in a tweet.
“So, the Coronavirus, which started in China and spread to various countries throughout the world, but very slowly in the U.S. because President Trump closed our border, and ended flights, VERY EARLY, is now being blamed, by the Do Nothing Democrats, to be the fault of ‘Trump,’” he added in a separate tweet.
On Wednesday, Trump announced that Vice President Mike Pence would oversee Washington’s response to the outbreak while Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar would continue chairing the White House coronavirus task force.
Pence’s office on Thursday said that Debbie Birx, an Obama-era State Department appointee and top AIDS official, would lead Team Trump’s efforts to combat the outbreak, which has killed at least 2,800 people and infected more than 83,000 around the world as of Friday.
In the US, there are 60 confirmed cases of the illness, including 45 people who were evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship. There have been no deaths reported in the US.
In a later tweet Friday, the president took a shot at Tom Steyer after the Democratic presidential candidate criticized him over the US response to the deadly outbreak.
“The President has already blown this. He is very, very late,” the billionaire businessman told CNN on Thursday.
“The first announcement of this publicly was at the end of December of last year. We’re at the end of February and he’s starting to focus on this and honestly, that is way too late,” he added
In his response Friday, Trump tweeted: “To the people of South Carolina, Tom Steyer is a joke, laughed at by everyone, a total incompetent.
“He made money in coal, now he ‘hates; coal. Did you see him fawning over Crazy Bernie? Has no chance, a loser for South Carolina, doesn’t deserve your vote!” he said.