Michelle Obama Releases Video Panning 'Tragedy' Of Trump's Coronavirus Response
Former first lady Michelle Obama tore into President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus crisis in a live video Tuesday, calling Trump’s pandemic leadership “willful mismanagement” and “negligence.”
“We simply cannot trust this president to tell us the truth about anything,” Obama said in her “Closing Argument,” a nearly 25-minute appeal to Americans to vote for Democratic nominee Joe Biden over Trump in next month’s presidential election.
“The worst part is it didn’t have to be like this,” Obama said of the more than 210,000 coronavirus-linked deaths in the United States. “So many other countries aren’t experiencing this level of extended suffering and uncertainty.”
She continued:
These countries were hit by the same virus as we were. They had the same kind of resources to contain it as we did. But what they didn’t have to contend with was this president ...
A man who knew how deadly this virus is but who lied to us and told us it would just disappear. Who, in the greatest crisis of our lifetimes, doubled down on division and resentment, railed against measures that could have mitigated the damage and continues to hold massive events without requiring masks or social distancing, knowingly exposing his own supporters to a dangerous virus.
Obama pointed out that the number of Americans who have died from the coronavirus is roughly double the U.S. toll from wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam and Korea combined.
“That is roughly the scale of this tragedy,” Obama said. “And our commander-in-chief sadly has been missing in action. And his willful mismanagement of the COVID crisis is just one example of his negligence.”
After months of downplaying COVID-19 and mocking Biden for wearing a face mask, Trump revealed on Friday that he had tested positive for the virus. He was hospitalized later that day.
On Sunday, Trump left the hospital for a brief joyride in his presidential limousine, sparking outrage from...
