Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts on Saturday said Vice President Mike Pence clammed up on a Friday call with Senate Democrats about the administration’s response to the coronavirus outbreak.
“This is the problem, of course — Vice President Pence gets on a phone call with all of the Democrats in the Senate and he basically says as little as he possibly can,” Ms. Warren said on MSNBC. “He tries not to be aggressive or tries not to get into a fight, but he also tries to say nothing and tries to deny every problem that we identify.”
Ms. Warren said the Trump administration is wrong to try to shift responsibility of the response to the coronavirus pandemic to the states.
“And Angus King is right when he says that is a dereliction of the duty of the president of the United States. It is the responsibility of the president to keep us safe,” Ms. Warren said.
President Trump on Saturday said the Democrats would have been unsatisfied with virtually anything Mr. Pence said.
The vice president “gave them everything that they would have wanted to hear in terms of gaining ground on the CoronaVirus, but nothing that anyone could have said, including ’it’s over’, could have made…them happy, or even a little bit satisfied,” Mr. Trump said on Twitter.
“They were RUDE and NASTY,” the president said.
Ms. Warren, who endorsed former Vice President Joseph R. Biden for president this week after ending her own 2020 campaign, has said she would accept an offer to run on the 2020 Democratic ticket if Mr. Biden presented one to her.
Mr. Pence on Friday said there’s no higher priority in the administration than continuing to dramatically expand coronavirus testing.
“We actually believe that we could double the amount of testing that’s taking place every day if we simply brought online all of the testing capabilities in all the labs,” Mr. Pence said in an interview with PBS.
“And that will continue to be our focus, even as the president is continuing to drive our team forward on identifying new forms of testing,” he said.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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