Democratic presidential candidate and billionaire Tom Steyer on Wednesday said President Trump’s response to the coronavirus has been “pathetic” and that his solution would be to turn back the clock and act earlier.
“His response to this health situation is dramatically inadequate. He doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Mr. Steyer said on CNN’s “New Day.” “I don’t think he’s aware of the extent of what’s happening, and his response has been pathetic.”
Asked what a President Steyer would do “this morning” about the coronavirus, Mr. Steyer said Mr. Trump is “late.”
“It isn’t a question of what I should be doing this morning — it’s a question of what I should have been doing a month or two ago when in fact it became clear that this was the kind of thing where we needed to send our experts to China to start working on this,” he said.
“He just requested money for medical research — that’s months late,” Mr. Steyer said. “We should have been over in China helping them; we should have been doing research to get a vaccine.”
The spread of the virus has rattled the stock market this week. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has indicated it’s not a question of if, but when it will spread in the U.S.
Mr. Steyer, a billionaire environmental activist, hasn’t yet won any delegates in the Democratic presidential race but has been polling in third place in South Carolina, which holds its primary on Saturday.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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