Video has emerged showing Trump talking about cutting the pandemic response team in 2018, despite saying last week “I didn't know about it”.
Trump said of the pandemic response team that “some of the people we’ve cut they haven’t been used for many, many years and if we ever need them we can get them very quickly and rather then spending the money.”
A former director of the unit, Dr Beth Cameron, used an op-ed in The Washington Post to say that “it is clear that eliminating the office has contributed to the federal government’s sluggish domestic response".
The unit was established by the previous Obama White House administration in 2014 after the outbreak of Ebola.