Let the truth be known

[Phil B.]

Fact Check: WH Dissolved Pandemic Unit but Did Not ‘Fire the Entire White House Pandemic Team’

CLAIM: President Donald Trump “fired the entire White House pandemic team.”
VERDICT: Partly false. Former National Security Advisor John Bolton “dissolved” the pandemic office but staff remained to deal with the issue.
Last month, Democrats tried a new way of blaming Trump for the coronavirus outbreak. Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg claimed during the Democrat debate in South Carolina that Trump “fired the pandemic specialist in this country two years ago, so there’s nobody here to figure out what the hell we should be doing. [Applause] And he’s defunded Centers for Disease Control, CDC so we don’t have the organization we need.”
Breitbart News rated that “Mostly False.” We noted:

In reality, the pandemic expert — Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer — left the National Security Council (NSC) voluntarily after then-National Security Advisor John Bolton was appointed.
Bolton disbanded the unit that Ziemer was supervising as part of an effort to downsize the bloated NSC staff…
The Trump administration has indeed proposed cuts to the CDC, but they have not been passed by Congress.

Moreover, some of the experts who had been part of the office remained on staff at the National Security Council.
Earlier this week, Democrats asked Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the president’s coronavirus team who leads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, about the decision to cut the White House’s National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense. He was asked whether it had been a “mistake.”
Fauci said no, but added that it would also have been “nice” to have it around.
“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,” he said.

Media are leaving out the first sentence. "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." https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4861229/user-clip-fauci-cutting-white-house-pandemic-office
— Joel B. Pollak (@joelpollak) March 14, 2020

The media largely ignored the first sentence and focused on the second.
On Friday, the former head of the pandemic office, Beth Cameron, wrote a lengthy op-ed in the Washington Post complaining about the decision to “dissolve” her unit.
She admitted she did not know “whether the decision to disband the directorate, which was made in May 2018, after John Bolton became national security adviser, was a tactical move to downgrade the issue or whether it was part of the White House’s interest in simplifying and shrinking the National Security Council staff.”
But she argued the decision created “unclear structure and strategy for coordinating pandemic preparedness and response.”
Still, she did not claim all the experts had been fired.
Also on Friday, a journalist at President Donald Trump’s press conference on coronavirus in the Rose Garden at the White House asked the president about the decision to cut the office. Trump said he did not know about it — which he may not have, since it was a decision made by Bolton.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) took to Twitter to accuse the president of lying, and added that Trump had “fired the entire White House pandemic team.”

Not true, @realDonaldTrump. I wrote to you more than 600 days ago demanding answers after you fired the entire White House pandemic team. https://t.co/ICbHOkyeyY pic.twitter.com/71OF9gKA3N
— Sherrod Brown (@SenSherrodBrown) March 13, 2020

After his tweet was retweeted by a New York Times reporter, several former NSC officials began to push back.
Former senior NSC official Tim Morrison — who testified in the impeachment hearings — called Sen. Brown’s claim “total garbage”:

Total garbage. I ran this team for a year and we worked on NSPM 14 (https://t.co/47ZCsvlSoL) and flu(https://t.co/bUVdE3IdgQ) and Ebola (https://t.co/8QsAV5bEyY). https://t.co/vkFb9Dkygg
— Tim_Morrison (@Tim_Morrison) March 13, 2020

Former NCS official Richard Goldberg noted that the staff in question were still at the White House:

Weird. A year later I was inside the NSC working with talented global health/biodefense professionals who coordinated an incredibly effective response to Ebola. They’re still there. Working hard. On #Covid_19. https://t.co/XSoBtXtAC5
— Richard Goldberg (@rich_goldberg) March 13, 2020

Ultimately, the argument is about whether the office should have been kept as a separate unit, or whether its functions could be done just as well by employees working in other parts of the organizational structure.
Fauci, who is a rare case of an expert whose opinion is valued by both sides, said it was not a “mistake” to cut the office but that it would be “nice” if it were still there. He may agree with the criticism — but only up to a point.
At some point it is worth questioning whether now is the best time for Democrats to be looking for a way to blame the president, or a way to help him — after wasting weeks on impeachment while he was tackling coronavirus.

[bsm2]

Fact Check: WH Dissolved Pandemic Unit but Did Not ‘Fire the Entire White House Pandemic Team’


CLAIM: President Donald Trump “fired the entire White House pandemic team.”
VERDICT: Partly false. Former National Security Advisor John Bolton “dissolved” the pandemic office but staff remained to deal with the issue.
Last month, Democrats tried a new way of blaming Trump for the coronavirus outbreak. Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg claimed during the Democrat debate in South Carolina that Trump “fired the pandemic specialist in this country two years ago, so there’s nobody here to figure out what the hell we should be doing. [Applause] And he’s defunded Centers for Disease Control, CDC so we don’t have the organization we need.”
Breitbart News rated that “Mostly False.” We noted:

In reality, the pandemic expert — Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer — left the National Security Council (NSC) voluntarily after then-National Security Advisor John Bolton was appointed.
Bolton disbanded the unit that Ziemer was supervising as part of an effort to downsize the bloated NSC staff…
The Trump administration has indeed proposed cuts to the CDC, but they have not been passed by Congress.

Moreover, some of the experts who had been part of the office remained on staff at the National Security Council.
Earlier this week, Democrats asked Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the president’s coronavirus team who leads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, about the decision to cut the White House’s National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense. He was asked whether it had been a “mistake.”
Fauci said no, but added that it would also have been “nice” to have it around.
“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,” he said.

Media are leaving out the first sentence. "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." https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4861229/user-clip-fauci-cutting-white-house-pandemic-office
— Joel B. Pollak (@joelpollak) March 14, 2020

The media largely ignored the first sentence and focused on the second.
On Friday, the former head of the pandemic office, Beth Cameron, wrote a lengthy op-ed in the Washington Post complaining about the decision to “dissolve” her unit.
She admitted she did not know “whether the decision to disband the directorate, which was made in May 2018, after John Bolton became national security adviser, was a tactical move to downgrade the issue or whether it was part of the White House’s interest in simplifying and shrinking the National Security Council staff.”
But she argued the decision created “unclear structure and strategy for coordinating pandemic preparedness and response.”
Still, she did not claim all the experts had been fired.
Also on Friday, a journalist at President Donald Trump’s press conference on coronavirus in the Rose Garden at the White House asked the president about the decision to cut the office. Trump said he did not know about it — which he may not have, since it was a decision made by Bolton.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) took to Twitter to accuse the president of lying, and added that Trump had “fired the entire White House pandemic team.”

Not true, @realDonaldTrump. I wrote to you more than 600 days ago demanding answers after you fired the entire White House pandemic team. https://t.co/ICbHOkyeyY pic.twitter.com/71OF9gKA3N
— Sherrod Brown (@SenSherrodBrown) March 13, 2020

After his tweet was retweeted by a New York Times reporter, several former NSC officials began to push back.
Former senior NSC official Tim Morrison — who testified in the impeachment hearings — called Sen. Brown’s claim “total garbage”:

Total garbage. I ran this team for a year and we worked on NSPM 14 (https://t.co/47ZCsvlSoL) and flu(https://t.co/bUVdE3IdgQ) and Ebola (https://t.co/8QsAV5bEyY). https://t.co/vkFb9Dkygg
— Tim_Morrison (@Tim_Morrison) March 13, 2020

Former NCS official Richard Goldberg noted that the staff in question were still at the White House:

Weird. A year later I was inside the NSC working with talented global health/biodefense professionals who coordinated an incredibly effective response to Ebola. They’re still there. Working hard. On #Covid_19. https://t.co/XSoBtXtAC5
— Richard Goldberg (@rich_goldberg) March 13, 2020

Ultimately, the argument is about whether the office should have been kept as a separate unit, or whether its functions could be done just as well by employees working in other parts of the organizational structure.
Fauci, who is a rare case of an expert whose opinion is valued by both sides, said it was not a “mistake” to cut the office but that it would be “nice” if it were still there. He may agree with the criticism — but only up to a point.
At some point it is worth questioning whether now is the best time for Democrats to be looking for a way to blame the president, or a way to help him — after wasting weeks on impeachment while he was tackling coronavirus.

Yep a complete FAILURE OF THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION and the President
Some Hoax!
Thanks for pointing it out
BTW Who's in-charge of the USA in your Fantasyland. Yep Trump

[bsm2]

[Phil B.]

Member of Department of Defense Busted for Espionage

Department of Defense linguist, Mariam Taha Thompson, has been arrested and charged with espionage. She was charged in the District of Columbia for handing over top secret and classified information to Hezbollah. According to the US State Department, Hezbollah is one of the worst terrorist organizations in the world. Along with information, the names of individuals were also given to the terrorist group, putting the lives of many Americans in severe danger.

According to the announcement and the affidavit, the sensitive information was gathered from the national defense, which included the names of those working with the United States Military personnel overseas. Their lives are now in grave danger.
All those involved who made the announcement of Thompson’s arrest were, John C. Demers, the Assistant Attorney General for National Security; Timothy J. Shea, the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia; Robert Wells, Acting Assistant Director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division; and Timothy R. Slater, the Assistant Director in Charge of the Washington Field Office.
Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers put out this statement, “While in a war zone, the defendant allegedly gave sensitive national defense information, including the names of individuals helping the United States, to a Lebanese national located overseas. If true, this conduct is a disgrace, especially for someone serving as a contractor with the United States military. This betrayal of country and colleagues will be punished.”
This “war zone” has been an ongoing drug trafficking from Latin America into the US. Hezbollah was the culprit in charge of the drug reign.
A few years ago, Operation Cassandra was a US task force team that went after Hezbollah to put an end to drug trafficking through Latin America. Obama terminated this operation and allowed Hezbollah to continue their illegal activities.

The Iranian backed terrorist group funneled a substantial amount of cocaine into America through used cars to expand their business. It was reported Hezbollah was racking in over $1 billion through trafficking weapons, drugs, money laundering, and other law-breaking offenses. Leave it to Obama, right?
President Trump resurrected the fight against Hezbollah, and the Trump administration is using this bust on Thompson to go forth and finish what Obama could not get done, or possibly allowed. Obama knew what was happening, and his ties with Iran made it easy for him to suspend Operation Cassandra.
The problem we face now is agents who went undercover from the DEA, those in the United States military, and other forms of government agents who took part in this operation, and the ones currently ongoing through the Trump administration are at risk. All of these groups went after Hezbollah’s underground networks to end Hezbollah’s reign.
The whole organization surveillance all shipments from West Africa to Latin America, and on to the Middle Eastern countries and all of Europe. The dirty money was transported by purchasing used cars from America and transported across the world inside the vehicles.
Under the Obama administration, as the sources went deeper, documents were destroyed, cases revealed which were supposed to remain secret, court records were lost in the system, and everything fell through the system. Sounds fishy.
This is the story of how Obama allowed everything to slip through the cracks. The ties he has with Iran would lead many to believe he is very well knowledgeable about Hezbollah’s trafficking and money laundering scheme.
With the case of Thompson coming up, this leaves the perfect opportunity for the Trump administration to take over. Yes, lives are at risk, but to find out the answers quickly would be the best way to get those whose names released out of harm’s way and start a fresh new investigation into the Obama administration. Finding out why all this happened and slipped through the cracks would answer so many questions.
There are people in Washington who still remain loyal to Obama and openly attack President Trump daily. We all wondered why Obama favored Iran over America so much. Why are Ilhan Omar and the other three women she associates with backing Iran more than America? Obama supported them to get to their seats in Congress.
Many people in Washington will be exposed when more cases like these pop-up. There is too much evidence to ignore, and the Trump administration will find the answers and bring all parties to justice. The Trump administration is going after Hezbollah, but the trails may have them going after Obama next.

[Phil B.]

Known Plagiarist Biden Trashes Trump's COVID Plans, Then Steals Trump's Plans & Peddles Them as His Own

If you’re a younger reader, your first exposure to Joe Biden is probably his time as Barack Obama’s second-in-command. You may not have known that 20 years earlier, he could have been the guy sitting at the Oval Office desk rather than the one standing beside it.
Biden was one of the Democratic contenders for president in 1988 and, unlike now, he was seen as an antidote to the Democratic establishment.

“The Democrats had taken two shellackings at the hands of Reagan, and there was this thought, not really based on a lot of facts, that the Democrats were too soft, too feminine, too much into interest politics, and Biden was seen by his own people as an antidote to that — good looking and athletic — who would come across as stronger,” Time reporter Laurence I. Barrett, who covered the campaign 1988, told another Time reporter in a 2019 interview.
Unfortunately for Biden, that campaign died in its early months when it turned out he plagiarized a speech from British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock without giving him attribution. Media scrutiny revealed Biden had plagiarized other politicians on the stump, and thusly was his campaign torpedoed before a single vote had been cast.
While it’s difficult to guess what would have happened had Biden won the nomination — and he was certainly the favorite before the plagiarism scandal — he would have been a stronger candidate against George H.W. Bush than the Democrats’ nominee that year was — the wholly ineffectual Michael Dukakis.

Thirty-two years and one generational health crisis later, Joe Biden hasn’t really learned his lesson.
On Thursday, Biden slammed the Trump administration’s response to coronavirus. This was disheartening, if unsurprising. He then told the crowd his plan to fight coronavirus — which was almost exactly what the president had been proposing.

First, Biden’s condemnation of the administration’s COVID-19 efforts, which came during a speech in Wilmington, Delaware.
“The administration’s failure on testing is colossal,” Biden said, according to Yahoo News. “It’s a failure of planning, leadership and execution.

“We have to help the world to drive coordinated global strategy, not shut ourselves out from the world. Unfortunately, this virus laid bare the severe shortcoming of the current administration.”
He also criticized the administration’s European travel ban and claimed Trump’s reference to COVID-19 as a “foreign virus” — which is objectively true, since the outbreak started in a foreign country — was evidence of bigotry.
“Neither should we panic or fall back on xenophobia. … labeling [the coronavirus] a foreign virus does not displace accountability for misjudgments that have been taken thus far by the Trump admin,” Biden said. “Coronavirus does not have a political affiliation.”
The thing was, as Trump’s campaign pointed out, much of Biden’s “presidential” coronavirus plan was stolen from another president — namely, the current one.

“Joe Biden’s coronavirus remarks today sounded awfully familiar. Listening to him, we felt a sense of déjà vu,” the campaign declared on its website. “Here’s why: Biden blatantly ripped off President Trump, and bizarrely called on him to do things he has in fact already done.
“Joe Biden said ‘no efforts should be spared’ to get private labs and universities working to rapidly expand testing for coronavirus.
“President Trump already acted on this weeks ago, ordering the FDA to allow hundreds of private labs and academic hospitals to rapidly begin testing for coronavirus.
“Joe Biden said that small businesses will need relief from coronavirus’ economic impact.

“President Trump already moved decisively to provide $50 billion in liquidity to small business owners, and is asking Congress for even more.
“Joe Biden said it is critical for insurance companies to waive copays for coronavirus testing.
“President Trump already got it done, securing a commitment from the nation’s insurance providers to waive all copays on coronavirus testing and expand coverage of coronavirus treatment in all their benefit plans. “
Perhaps most critically, Biden said it was time to “accelerate” the search for a coronavirus vaccine — something the Trump administration had already done in January. According to CNBC, officials fast-tracked the vaccine with the hope of clinical trials in three months, although officials admitted this was an optimistic timeline. If there was a way to faster-track this, Biden didn’t make that clear.

Stealing ideas isn’t necessarily academic plagiarism, but stealing the ideas of a man you’re excoriating isn’t a good look.
The Thursday speech was apparently Biden’s presidential moment. If you wanted to look at it uncritically, it was. Democrats have always been able to project their idea of a perfect president on Biden, even if he isn’t presidential material.
Looking closer, 32 years hasn’t changed Biden much. He’s still stealing ideas, if not exact words. At least with Neil Kinnock, it was an ideological ally.
By the way, as the Trump campaign pointed out, Biden’s already been in a position where he could reassure the public in the face of a pandemic. He failed miserably.

NEVERBIDEN

[copier addict]

Member of Department of Defense Busted for Espionage

Department of Defense linguist, Mariam Taha Thompson, has been arrested and charged with espionage. She was charged in the District of Columbia for handing over top secret and classified information to Hezbollah. According to the US State Department, Hezbollah is one of the worst terrorist organizations in the world. Along with information, the names of individuals were also given to the terrorist group, putting the lives of many Americans in severe danger.

According to the announcement and the affidavit, the sensitive information was gathered from the national defense, which included the names of those working with the United States Military personnel overseas. Their lives are now in grave danger.
All those involved who made the announcement of Thompson’s arrest were, John C. Demers, the Assistant Attorney General for National Security; Timothy J. Shea, the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia; Robert Wells, Acting Assistant Director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division; and Timothy R. Slater, the Assistant Director in Charge of the Washington Field Office.
Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers put out this statement, “While in a war zone, the defendant allegedly gave sensitive national defense information, including the names of individuals helping the United States, to a Lebanese national located overseas. If true, this conduct is a disgrace, especially for someone serving as a contractor with the United States military. This betrayal of country and colleagues will be punished.”
This “war zone” has been an ongoing drug trafficking from Latin America into the US. Hezbollah was the culprit in charge of the drug reign.
A few years ago, Operation Cassandra was a US task force team that went after Hezbollah to put an end to drug trafficking through Latin America. Obama terminated this operation and allowed Hezbollah to continue their illegal activities.

The Iranian backed terrorist group funneled a substantial amount of cocaine into America through used cars to expand their business. It was reported Hezbollah was racking in over $1 billion through trafficking weapons, drugs, money laundering, and other law-breaking offenses. Leave it to Obama, right?
President Trump resurrected the fight against Hezbollah, and the Trump administration is using this bust on Thompson to go forth and finish what Obama could not get done, or possibly allowed. Obama knew what was happening, and his ties with Iran made it easy for him to suspend Operation Cassandra.
The problem we face now is agents who went undercover from the DEA, those in the United States military, and other forms of government agents who took part in this operation, and the ones currently ongoing through the Trump administration are at risk. All of these groups went after Hezbollah’s underground networks to end Hezbollah’s reign.
The whole organization surveillance all shipments from West Africa to Latin America, and on to the Middle Eastern countries and all of Europe. The dirty money was transported by purchasing used cars from America and transported across the world inside the vehicles.
Under the Obama administration, as the sources went deeper, documents were destroyed, cases revealed which were supposed to remain secret, court records were lost in the system, and everything fell through the system. Sounds fishy.
This is the story of how Obama allowed everything to slip through the cracks. The ties he has with Iran would lead many to believe he is very well knowledgeable about Hezbollah’s trafficking and money laundering scheme.
With the case of Thompson coming up, this leaves the perfect opportunity for the Trump administration to take over. Yes, lives are at risk, but to find out the answers quickly would be the best way to get those whose names released out of harm’s way and start a fresh new investigation into the Obama administration. Finding out why all this happened and slipped through the cracks would answer so many questions.
There are people in Washington who still remain loyal to Obama and openly attack President Trump daily. We all wondered why Obama favored Iran over America so much. Why are Ilhan Omar and the other three women she associates with backing Iran more than America? Obama supported them to get to their seats in Congress.
Many people in Washington will be exposed when more cases like these pop-up. There is too much evidence to ignore, and the Trump administration will find the answers and bring all parties to justice. The Trump administration is going after Hezbollah, but the trails may have them going after Obama next.

TOS (trump obedience syndrome) at its finest. Lol

[Phil B.]

Top Dems Bash Trump for Seeking Payroll Tax Cut, But Called It a 'Victory' When Obama Did It

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer are resisting President Donald Trump’s calls for a temporary payroll tax cut, but they backed such a move during Barack Obama’s administration.
The rate for the Social Security payroll tax is currently 6.2 percent for both the employer and the employee.
On Monday, Trump proposed a cut to the payroll tax, as well targeted loans and tax breaks to industries most impacted by the coronavirus outbreak.
As news of the president’s ideas began circulating over the weekend, Pelosi and Schumer responded in a joint statement, charging Trump with putting the interests of corporations above the American worker.

“In light of reports that the Trump administration is considering new tax cuts for major corporations impacted by the coronavirus, we are demanding that the administration prioritize the health and safety of American workers and their families over corporate interests,” Pelosi and Schumer said.
They sang a different tune during Obama’s administration, when both stood firmly behind payroll tax cuts.

In a 2011 news release celebrating the extension of a payroll tax cut of 2 percentage points, then-House Minority Leader Pelosi said, “Today is a victory for all Americans — for the security of our middle class, for the health of our seniors, and for economic growth and job creation.”
“We still have work to do to ensure this extension lasts throughout 2012. Today, I have appointed conferees who will begin work immediately on a bipartisan bill that will create jobs, grow our economy, and strengthen our middle class,” she added.
Schumer chastised the Republican-controlled House for its failure to swiftly approve 2011 payroll tax cut.
“House GOP trying to play catch-up on jobs but their stalling of payroll tax cut shows they are still putting politics before recovery,” Schumer tweeted.

House GOP trying to play catch-up on jobs but their stalling of payroll tax cut shows they are still putting politics before recovery
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) August 29, 2011


It should be noted the country was two years out of the Great Recession at that point, though the economy was only experiencing a 1.6 percent growth rate, down one point from the previous year.
In 2012, a re-election year, Obama signed a payroll tax cut extension into law.
“This tax cut makes a difference for a lot of families,” Obama said at the time
https://youtu.be/5LiM6aYz1LA


Fiscal responsibility does not seem to be the reason Democrats are resisting a payroll tax cut now.

[Phil B.]

Flashback: Obama also pushed for cuts to CDC

In the never-ending quest to destroy President Trump, the media has been fixated on two factors amid the coronavirus outbreak, a shortage of testing kits and the Trump administration’s decision to disband the White House pandemic office.
In an extension of the latter, the press has also reported on the efforts to cut funding for government health agencies, hindsight being 20/20 for armchair quarterbacks.
The Washington Post reported last month that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was forced to cut efforts to prevent global disease outbreak by 80% when funding for the program began to run out.
More from the Washington Post:

“Local public health agencies have lost almost a quarter of their overall workforce since 2008 — a cut of almost 60,000 workers, according to national associations of health officials. The agencies’ main source for federal funding — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s emergency preparedness budget — has been cut 30 percent since 2003. And the Trump administration has proposed cutting even deeper.”

As noted, these cuts have come over a number of years, to include when President Barack Obama was in office.

As the Huffington Post reported, Obama wasn’t consistent when it came to funding the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. After seeing an increase in his first three years in the White House, the CDC’s budget fell by $430 million in fiscal year 2013, as Obama’s funding requests for the CDC dropped.
With spending going unchecked in Washington, DC, the real culprit may by austerity — and a Congress that refuses to address overspending.
An unnamed administration official told The Huffington Post that “sequestration and tight budget caps have had an impact on a range of critical health care programs.”
As the coronavirus ramped up, Business Insider ran with this blaring headline in late February: “Trump spent the past 2 years slashing the government agencies responsible for handling the coronavirus outbreak.”
“Fears of a pandemic come after the Trump administration spent the past several years gutting the very government programs that are tasked with combatting such a crisis,” the liberal website reported.
Intent on not letting a serious crisis go to waste, the progressive left is capitalizing on the opportunity to blame Republicans.

A new ad by the hard-left Agenda Project Action Fund, the group responsible for the controversial “Granny Off the Cliff” ad run during the battle for Obamacare, has come out with a brutal ad titled, “Republican Cuts Kill.”

The pandemic office was part of a directorate from the National Security Council, and the decision to disband it was made in May 2018, after John Bolton became national security adviser.
The NSC had swollen to a staff of 250 under the Obama administration and has since been downsized to about 115.
Bolton, not necessarily Trump-friendly, took to Twitter on Saturday to dismiss claims that this impaired the nation’s ability to respond.

“Claims that streamlining NSC structures impaired our nation’s bio defense are false,” Bolton tweeted. “Global health remained a top NSC priority, and its expert team was critical to effectively handling the 2018-19 Africa Ebola crisis. The angry Left just can’t stop attacking, even in a crisis.”

Claims that streamlining NSC structures impaired our nation’s bio defense are false. Global health remained a top NSC priority, and its expert team was critical to effectively handling the 2018-19 Africa Ebola crisis. The angry Left just can’t stop attacking, even in a crisis.
— John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) March 14, 2020

At the same time, Trump’s recent budget included a funding increase for the CDC and the National Institutes of Health.

The president was asked about disbanding the pandemic office Friday during a press briefing when NBC News White House correspondent Kristen Welker cited unnamed officials who reportedly worked in that office saying valuable time was lost because of that decision.
An annoyed Trump responded by calling it “a nasty question,” stressing that he didn’t do it, but was cut off before he finished his thought.

YouTube

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Game Over
89921473_10156738176636104_4997979491608297472_o.jpg

[bsm2]

Trump budget chief holds firm on CDC cuts amid virus outbreak
Russ Vought, the acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, on Tuesday doubled down on proposed cuts to health services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), despite the coronavirus outbreak.


Vought came under intense questioning from Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.) at a hearing about President Trump’s 2021 budget request. It proposed cutting Health and Human Services funding by $9.5 billion, including a 15 percent cut of $1.2 billion to the CDC and a $35 million decrease to the Infectious Diseases Rapid Response Reserve Fund's annual contribution.


“The question I have is, are we prepared to fight pandemics if we cut from programs that are specifically designed to prepare for them, including the coronavirus?” Cartwright asked.


Vought responded by saying Trump signed into law the $8.3 billion emergency supplemental package Congress approved last week.


That funding, a significant increase over the $2.5 billion emergency request the White House sent over, would be spread out over several years. The funding in question at the hearing was for next year's spending. Cartwright pressed Vought as to whether he would amend the request.


“The question is today, as we sit here and we know about coronavirus and the impact it’s taking on the people of the world and the economies of the world and the stock market and everything, as you sit here today, are you ready to take that back?” he pressed.


Vought confirmed that the administration was sticking to its request.


“If you’re asking if I’m sending up a budget amendment, no, I’m not sending up a budget amendment,” he said.


An OMB spokesman said that the CDC cuts in the budget request did not affect infectious disease, and said Trump's request included a total of $4.3 billion in funds for Infectious Diseases and Preparedness, in funds that deal with the flu, opioids, and global health security.


“The $4.3 billion funds all of the CDC programs that focus on infectious disease and emergency preparedness activities," they said.


"This figure reflects that the Administration is prioritizing funding for infectious disease and emergency preparedness efforts at CDC, compared to non-infectious activities, like studying the health and safety risks of infrequent bathroom breaks for taxi drivers," they added.


Congress is already looking into a broader fiscal response to the coronavirus outbreak, which has led to significant stock market correction and threatened economic growth.


Trump will discuss possible economic options to stem the impact of the virus outbreak with Senate Republicans on Tuesday.