Politifacts...
Celebrities are sharing a misleading post about Trump’s response to coronavirus
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Trump did attempt to cut the CDC’s funding, but Congress prevented it from happening.
While officials in charge of the U.S. response to pandemics did leave in 2018, it’s unclear if they were “fired.”
The U.S. was not on a list of countries receiving COVID-19 tests from the WHO. But the U.S. doesn’t usually rely on the agency for diagnostic tests, and the testing delay was due mainly to an error with the CDC’s protocol.
While Trump has called the Democratic response to the coronavirus a “hoax,” he has not used the term to describe the virus itself.
See the sources for this fact-check
Democrats have criticized President Donald Trump’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic as disorganized and short-sighted. On Instagram, the critics include some celebrities.
On March 15, actor and comedian D.L. Hughley posted a screenshot of a tweet that makes several claims about the Trump administration’s actions against coronavirus.
"Dear President Trump," reads the tweet, which was published March 13 by an account called Translate Trump. "YOU cut funding to the CDC; YOU fired the Pandemic Response Team; YOU refused WHO tests; YOU wasted 2 weeks calling this outbreak a ‘Democrat hoax.’"
"This is a (sic) what a failed public response to a pandemic looks like."
This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) It had more than 42,000 likes as of March 17.
(Screenshot from Instagram)
In the United States, the coronavirus had infected 4,226 people in 49 states, with 94 deaths, as of March 17. On March 11, Trump announced several sweeping actions to slow the spread of the virus, including a ban on travel from a slate of European countries.
Some public health experts have said the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic has been too slow, but are the four claims shown in Hughley’s Instagram post accurate? We looked at each one.
The Instagram post has elements of truth but leaves out a lot of important information. We reached out to Translate Trump and the White House for comments, but we haven’t heard back.
Trump "cut funding to the CDC"
While it’s not accurate to say that Trump "cut" funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it is accurate to say he tried.
The Trump administration’s initial proposals for the budgets for emerging and zoonotic infectious diseases at the CDC — a key player in the fight against coronavirus — have consistently been lower than what was spent the previous year.
However, Congress reshapes presidential recommendations as it sees fit when it crafts final spending bills.
Every year since Trump has been president, lawmakers have passed funding bills — which he has signed — that not only exceeded what Trump requested for emerging infections but also exceeded the previous year’s spending.
As the chart below shows, funding increased every year from fiscal year 2017 to fiscal year 2020. (We have not included the 2017 proposal, since that was submitted by the Obama administration. The figures for 2020 are preliminary.)
On Feb. 24, Trump asked Congress for a $2.5 billion supplemental budget to help combat the emergence of this coronavirus. House Democrats said the amount was insufficient, and instead passed an $8.3 billion bill that Trump signed March 6. The money will fund efforts to develop a vaccine and help local governments respond to the pandemic.
Trump "fired the Pandemic Response Team"
This needs context. "Fired" is a strong term for what happened, and Trump recently created a team to lead the government’s response to COVID-19.
In May 2018, Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer, the senior director of global health and biodefense on the National Security Council, left the administration. He was in charge of the U.S. response to pandemics.
After Ziemer’s departure, the global health team was reorganized as part of an effort by then-National Security Adviser John Bolton. Meanwhile, Tom Bossert, a homeland security adviser who recommended strong defenses against disease, left shortly after Bolton arrived.
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