CNN's Gloria Borger demolishes Trump administration's 'absurd' attempts to dodge responsibility for pandemic response

On Wednesday's edition of CNN's "The Situation Room," analyst Gloria Borger slammed President Donald Trump and his top officials for trying to skate responsibility for the president's own efforts to downplay the coronavirus pandemic for weeks.

"Gloria, when I asked the vice president earlier in the day why it took so long to grasp the severity of this pandemic, the vice president seemed to point the finger at the CDC, at China. He even said it took Dr. Deborah Birx until Friday to give them the latest modeling on the death toll, 100,000 to 240,000," said anchor Wolf Blitzer. "What do you make of that kind of spin?"

"I think it's absurd. I think it's spin, that's exactly what it is," said Borger. "And if the president wasn't aware of the modeling, why was Sanjay Gupta aware? Why were a lot of doctors that we've interviewed on our air aware? Why were scientists all across the country aware of the modeling? This is something that was not kept a secret. It was published. And that's because, as Sanjay was alluding to before, the administration does have a timing problem. You want to compare the United States to Italy in the sense that we got started late."

"I refer you back to the end of February when the president was at a campaign rally and was complaining about Democrats overreacting according to him, to the coronavirus, he called it their 'new hoax,'" continued Borger. "And I've got a list of things, you know, January, the president was saying this is totally under control. February 10, we're in great shape. February 26, we're going down and not up. And March 10th, saying, just stay calm, it will all go away. Well, that hasn't happened. And if the president wasn't aware of the modeling, as the vice president said, I think we can all ask why."

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