Fact Check: Trump didn't "eliminate" the Pandemic Office, he downsized it into dysfunctionality

[MrScorpio]

Was the White House office for global pandemics eliminated?

By
Glenn Kessler and
Meg Kelly
March 20, 2020 at 3:00 a.m. EDT

“The Obama-Biden Administration set up the White House National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense to prepare for future pandemics like covid-19. Donald Trump eliminated it — and now we’re paying the price.”

—Former vice president Joe Biden, in a tweet, March 19

Several readers have written The Fact Checker, saying they were confused by dueling opinion articles that appeared in The Washington Post concerning the National Security Council office highlighted in Biden’s tweet.

On March 13, The Post published an article by Beth Cameron, a former Obama administration official, titled “I ran the White House pandemic office. Trump closed it.” She argued that “eliminating the office,” which she headed from September 2016 to March 2017, “has contributed to the federal government’s sluggish domestic response” to the coronavirus pandemic.

Three days later, The Post published an article by Tim Morrison, a former Trump administration official, titled “No, the White House didn’t ‘dissolve’ its pandemic response office. I was there.” He countered that office, which he oversaw for about a year starting in July 2018, was folded into another one to streamline a bloated organization and “the combined directorate was stronger because related expertise could be commingled.”

Rearranging organizational charts and bureaucratic intrigue is part of the lifeblood of official Washington, but it can have meaningful consequences for Americans. The government works effectively when the right people are in the right place to make decisions — and the Trump administration’s stumbling response to the coronavirus suggests the government is not working as effectively as it could.
Asked at a congressional hearing on March 11 whether it was a mistake to eliminate the office, Anthony S. Fauci, who runs the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, diplomatically said: “I wouldn’t necessarily characterize it as a mistake. I would say we worked very well with that office. It would be nice if the office was still there.”

Can one office really make a difference? At a news conference on March 13, President Trump dismissed this as a “nasty” question. Let’s explore.

The rest: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/20/was-white-house-office-global-pandemics-eliminated/

[The Magistrate]

1. Anything By a 'Former Trump Administration Official', Sir

May safely be presumed a lie.

The truth is just not in such people. They are no more capable of telling it than they are of flying higher from a sixteenth storey windowsill.

[MrScorpio]

2. What's amazing to me is this argument over semantics...

Which only serves to distract from Trump's heavy-handed bungling of the response.

[The Magistrate]

3. It Is Damned Foolish, Sir

But only to be expected from the press with its idiotic conception of 'balanced' coverage.


"When someone says it's raining, and someone says it isn't, a journalist's job is to step outside and see if he gets wet, not to note there is a difference of opinion on the matter."

[MrScorpio]

6. The lesson here, if anything is a practical example of what happens when you shrink government...

So that it's small enough to drown it in a bathtub.

[The Magistrate]

8. True, Sir

"The poor object to being misgoverned. The rich object to being governed at all."

[treestar]

4. Oh bullshit

Claiming Obama's newly created office was bloated and inefficient. Give me a break. That's just their new spin. Even Fauci says it would be nice if it was still there. Nice? Yes, tell the dead it would just be nice.

[Johnny2X2X]

5. You've touched on a good point

Trump and his cabal get people to concede points by lying. So instead of fighting about whether or not it was bloated and ineffective (it wasn't), the media in effect concedes that point to move onto the lie.

There is zero evidence the system Obama left was inefficient or filled with red tape. To the contrary actually.

[MrScorpio]

7. Bingo!

[dweller]

9. Tim Morrison ?

Tim Morrison .. that name rings a bell
oh yeah, the impeachment ...
😑

✌🏼