Trump rages at Obama in early morning coronavirus rant

President Donald Trump started off Friday morning of a disastrous week by blaming former President Barack Obama and the Centers for Disease Control for his own problems.

The president accused Obama of bungling the response to the H1N1 swine flu epidemic in 2009, and complained the former president had made changes to the CDC that hampered his own response to the coronavirus outbreak.

"For decades the @CDCgov looked at, and studied, its testing system, but did nothing about it," Trump tweeted. "It would always be inadequate and slow for a large scale pandemic, but a pandemic would never happen, they hoped. President Obama made changes that only complicated things further."

Trump claimed his administration -- which has faced widespread criticism already and has spooked the markets -- had removed Obama-era obstacles to improve the response to the current outbreak, which his administration was warned about months ago.

"Their response to H1N1 Swine Flu was a full scale disaster, with thousands dying, and nothing meaningful done to fix the testing problem, until now," Trump said. "The changes have been made and testing will soon happen on a very large scale basis. All Red Tape has been cut, ready to go!"