Pelosi: Trump’s denial, delay on coronavirus response ‘is deadly’

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Sunday President Trump’s delay and denial in responding to the coronavirus pandemic has had “deadly” consequences for Americans. 

“His denial at the beginning was deadly, his delaying of getting equipment … to where it is needed is deadly, and now the best thing would be to do is to prevent more loss of life, rather than open things up so that, because we just don’t know,” Pelosi said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” 

Asked about her thoughts on the administration considering relaxing federal guidelines for less-affected parts of the country, Pelosi said the U.S. “should be taking every precaution.” 

“I don’t know what the purpose of that is,” she said, adding that she doesn’t know that the scientists are telling Trump. 

.@SpeakerPelosi says the President downplaying the severity of #coronavirus is “deadly.”

“As the President fiddles, people are dying. We just have to take every precaution.” #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/y8bFNbaPJy

— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) March 29, 2020

“As the president fiddles, people are dying. We just have to take every precaution,” she added. 

The Speaker also criticized Trump for his remarks last week at the signing of the stimulus bill, when he said “just to think how life can change where you go, 20 to 22 days ago, everything is perfect … and then, one day, we get hit with this thing that nobody ever heard of before.”

“No everything wasn’t, great we had nearly 500 cases and 17 deaths already, and in that 20 days because we weren’t prepared we now have 2,000 deaths and 100,000 cases,” Pelosi said. “We really want to work in a unifying way to get the job done here, but we cannot continue to … make these underestimates of what is actually happening here.” 

Pelosi stressed that the focus should be on moving forward, rather than on what could or should have been done. 

Evaluating what scientists told Trump about the virus and when he was informed can be part of an “after-action review,” she added.