Part of the speech by Eva Longoria as she opens the DNC Convention;
“Joe knows about Pandemic’s in 2014. He helped stop the spread of Ebola and brought the world together to keep it contained. And after that success, knowing this would happen again. Vice President Biden and President Obama assembled a pandemic playbook to make sure that America was prepared and protected.
The Trump administration disbanded the pandemic response team that was given to them knowing this would happen again.
Vice President Biden and President Obama assembled a pandemic playbook.
The Trump administration disbanded the pandemic response team.
Americans have died and lost their livelihoods because of it. We, the people, deserve a president who believes in science, that recognizes the threat of covid, who has a plan to get us through it. And that is Joe Biden.”
FACT CHECK #1 – THE PANDEMIC PLAYBOOK
Download or view the Pandemic Playbook assembled by Obama and Biden in 2016.
The Trump administration had been briefed on the document in 2017, but it was not approved by the NSC (National Security Council) referring to the document as “quite dated”:
Download or view the National Biodefense Strategy 2018 (this url link has since been removed: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/National-Biodefense-Strategy.pdfBiodefense-Strategy.pdf) streamlined by the Trump Administration. This directorate combined NSC experts focused on biological threats under a single and more senior leader and did away with a confusing organizational chart that required some experts to report to two bosses simultaneously.
In short, the NSC retained the same number of experts focused on biological threats that the Obama administration had, but focused and housed them in a more coherent structure and with a more Senior Leader.
FACT CHECK #2 – DISBANDING THE PANDEMIC RESPONSE TEAM
Trump did not get rid of the Pandemic Unit at the National Security Council, he did however move them to another division with a different title.
The President never lost expertise on the Pandemic front at the National Security Council. It didn’t reduce the Security Council’s ability to deal with this in any way. This is just misguided media narrative.
Some Interesting clips:
Rumors had been passed around by the press that Trump threw Obama’s playbook out to the detriment of the country. Kayleigh called out this rumor as untrue, explaining that in fact, the Trump administration had produced two robust reports to replace the one outdated, insufficient report left behind by the Obama administration. She then held up two professionally full-color binders to prove the point, each containing Trump’s new updated playbooks.