Hillary Clinton blasts Trump's Covid-19 response, says 'would've done a much better job' if she was president
Hillary Clinton is the latest to criticize Donald Trump's response to coronavirus situation and accused the president of exaggerating the economic drawbacks of the pandemic and the related shutdown that's been necessary to flatten the curve.
The country currently has the highest number of coronavirus cases in the world with more than 2.7 million positive cases for Covid-19, according to Johns Hopkins University's live-tracking dashboard. Of the 522,000 who have succumbed to the virus across the world, more than 128,000 can be traced to US shores. Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter for a recent interview, Clinton, who was the Democratic nominee for president in 2016 when Trump won, claimed she would have done a "better job" of managing the crisis if she had become the commander-in-chief.
"We wouldn't have been able to stop the pandemic at our borders the way that Trump claimed in the beginning, but we sure could have done a better job saving lives, modeling better, more responsible behavior," she said. "I don't think we necessarily should have had as deep an economic assault on livelihoods and jobs as we have. So I know I would have done a better job," she added.
It's not the first time that the former first lady, and secretary of state, has slammed Trump over his and his administration's response to the pandemic. Just last week, she responded to Barbara Streisand's ponderous tweet about what the country would have been like if she had become president in 2016. "Can you imagine how President Hillary Clinton — a Woman with a powerful mind — would have handled this pandemic?" the actress had written. "Being a mother and grandmother, she would’ve instinctively taken care of the public health of the people of the United States."
In response, Clinton tweeted, "I would have read my damn briefs, Barbara, that's for sure." She was referring to Trump's claim that he was not aware and briefed by the security agencies on the matter of Russia placing secret bounties on the US soldiers in the wake of an explosive report by the New York Times.
The report in question noted that 20 US soldiers were killed in Afghanistan in 2019 and that the Russian military intelligence’s Unit 29155 allegedly offered bounties to militants in Afghanistan to kill US soldiers and other NATO troops there. "The intelligence finding was briefed to Trump, and the White House’s National Security Council discussed the problem at an inter-agency meeting in late March," it said, adding that White House officials allegedly discussed possible options to retaliate against Russia, which included diplomatic reprimands and sanctions, but took no action.
Trump had been heavily criticized in the aftermath of the report from both sides of the aisle. Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, who was Hillary Clinton’s running mate in 2016, said, "Trump was cozying up to Putin and inviting him to the G7 all while his administration reportedly knew Russia was trying to kill US troops in Afghanistan and derail peace talks with the Taliban."
John Weaver, a Republican political consultant, similarly tweeted, "Trump knew Russia was paying bounties on the lives of American servicemen in Afghanistan. He took no action against Putin. Instead, @realDonaldTrump REWARDED Putin by trying to insert Russia back into the G-7. And, not enough, withdrawing 25,000 American troops from Germany."