CHICAGO — Former President Barack Obama criticized his successor, Donald J. Trump, for his administration’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting that ignoring preparedness measures resulted in hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths. Speaking recently, Obama referenced a pandemic response plan his administration developed and handed over to the incoming Trump administration, which he said was ultimately disregarded.
“In my last year in office, we put together a playbook for how to deal with the eventuality of a pandemic,” Obama said. “When Donald Trump came in, we gave over this playbook to them. But the point is, he ignored it.”
He added that while any administration would have faced significant challenges during the pandemic, Trump’s failure to act on the plan had grave consequences.
Obama drew comparisons between the United States and other countries, notably Canada, where the per capita death rate was significantly lower. “If you look at a country like Canada, their per capita death rate was 40% lower than it was here in the United States,” he said. “That’s more than 400,000 people… who would have been alive if Donald Trump had just paid attention and tried to follow the plan that we gave him.”
The former president acknowledged that the pandemic posed a generational challenge, but he emphasized that leadership and preparedness could have saved many lives. “No matter who was president at the time, this was going to be a problem,” Obama said, “but it does matter having somebody competent, somebody who cares about you, who listens to ordinary people, who listens to people who are experts in these areas.”
The comments are among the most direct criticisms Obama has made regarding Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis, a subject that remains deeply contentious in U.S. political discourse.