Wednesday on CNN, former Obama administration National Security Adviser Susan Rice said she did not know how White House advisor Jared Kushner can call the Trump administration’s coronavirus response a “success.”
On Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” Kushner said, “The federal government rose to the challenge, and this is a great success story.”
Rice said, “It’s ridiculous. And it would be laughable if it weren’t so deadly serious. I don’t know how anybody with a straight face can call this a great success and declare this a mission accomplished moment when more than 60,000 Americans are dead when more than a million are infected.”
She continued, “This is the beginning, not the end of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States. Dr. Fauci’s judgment, whose judgment I trust implicitly, has just said he believes a second wave in the fall is inevitable, and that’s the pattern of pandemics of the past. So we are far from being able to declare victory. In any event, there’s no victory when the losses on the battlefield in less than two months exceed all of those through the entirety of the Vietnam War, 26 plus million Americans are out of work, the GDP is declining at a rate of almost five percent. That number’s going to go way down. Our economy is suffering extraordinarily, and human beings, most importantly, are dying and suffering and losing.”
She added, “So we need to come together with a realistic assessment of where we are. This is not the time for politics. This is not the time for victory laps. This is time to buckle up and realize that we’re at an inflection point. We’re either going to continue to take the steps that are necessary to keep Americans safe, or we’re going to prematurely declare victory, open everything before circumstances warrant. And we’re going to be right back in the barrel in a worse situation in the months to come.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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