Not to pick on JetFan79, but this is a good example of where claims need context, but aren't getting it in this thread.
Fact Check: WH Dissolved Pandemic Unit but Did Not 'Fire the Entire White House Pandemic Team'
You're quoting a "fact check" from BREITBART?! That's a blatant contradiction in terms. OF COURSE Breitbart will spin this travesty to favor Trump. Stop with such nonsense. Following are multiple links to the truth, you can't dismiss them all in favor of your apparent affirmation bias. (Or maybe you can.) Just to be clear, let's not parse this down to the vague differences between "fire," "dismiss," "disband" and "make someone uncomfortable enough to resign." The bottom line is a life-saving agency went bye-bye under Trump's watch.
Link:
https://www.washingtonpost.com
Link:
Trump disbanded NSC pandemic unit that experts had praised
Link:
How Trump Made America Far Less Prepared For Coronavirus
Just over a year ago, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence sounded alarms about America’s vulnerability to a major public health crisis. “We assess that the United States and the world will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large scale outbreak of a contagious disease,” the DNI
reported in January 2019, “that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, strain international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support.”
But Donald Trump put his head in the sand. After slashing federal pandemic response teams and kneecapping other public health initiatives throughout his first term, he failed to prioritize the potential for outbreak, declining to devote adequate resources to the looming threat. Now, as the DNI’s grim forecast last year proves correct, the United States’ national security apparatus is scrambling both to address a growing crisis in the country—and, potentially, within its ranks.
Link:
Former director of White House pandemic office says disbanding unit left U.S. "less prepared" for COVID-19 in op-ed
A former senior director of the National Security Council's dissolved pandemic unit said its closure left the United States "less prepared" for the COVID-19 outbreak. Beth Cameron wrote in an op-ed for
The Washington Post that the Trump administration's response to the novel coronavirus had been "slow and inadequate," and suggested that the closure of the Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense had contributed to its "sluggish" response.
Link:
Trump disbanded NSC pandemic unit that experts had praised (Associated Press)
Link:
Trump disbanded NSC pandemic unit that experts had praised (ABC News)
WASHINGTON -- Public
health and national security experts shake their heads when President
Donald Trump says the
coronavirus "came out of nowhere" and “blindsided the world.” They've been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump administration's decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House charged with preparing for when, not if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump's elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see the threat of pandemics in the same way that many experts in the field did.
Link:
Did Trump Administration Fire the US Pandemic Response Team?
Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer abruptly departed from his post leading the global health security team on the National Security Council in May 2018 amid a reorganization of the council by then-National Security Advisor John Bolton, and Ziemer’s team was disbanded. Tom Bossert, whom the Washington Post reported “had called for a comprehensive biodefense strategy against pandemics and biological attacks,” had been
fired one month prior.
It’s thus true that the Trump administration axed the executive branch team responsible for coordinating a response to a pandemic and did not replace it, eliminating Ziemer’s position and reassigning others, although Bolton was the executive at the top of the National Security Council chain of command at the time.
Link:
Former pandemic team leader details the damage Trump did by kneecapping our response capability
So when Donald Trump says he doesn’t take responsibility at all for the lack of testing — well, that’s about as outrageous as it gets. The only thing that’s
more outrageous is his risible and craven attempt to blame Obama
Link:
Sign Petition: Trump fired America's pandemic response team. Demand he reassemble it to confront the coronavirus pa
Over the past three years the Trump administration has systematically dismantled much of our nation's defenses for responding to just such a pandemic, slashing staff and "disease-fighting operational budgets" at various critical agencies including the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Department of Health and Human Services, (HHS), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In a particularly damning piece of reporting, Foreign Policy
noted, "The global health section of the CDC was so drastically cut in 2018 that much of its staff was laid off and the number of countries it was working in was reduced from 49 to merely 10."
