Trump’s bizarre effort to tag Obama’s swine flu response as ‘a disaster’
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As the coronavirus pandemic emerged, President Trump quickly sought to compare his performance to the pandemic that appeared in 2009 under the watch of his predecessor, Barack Obama. He called it a “big failure” and a “debacle,” compounded by “horrific mistakes.” He railed about the death toll, often inflating the figures to 17,000, as he did in this recent tweet.
These criticism might have had some resonance back when there appeared to be relatively few cases in the United States.
We’ve tracked this claim in our database of Trump’s false and misleading claims but since he persists in using it, it’s time for a Pinocchio rating. (Note: Contrary to Trump’s tweet, Obama had far better polling numbers than Trump has ever had during the swine flu pandemic, and the Obamacare website did not cost $5 billion.)
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