Former Vice President Joe Biden claims he was not part of the Obama administration’s response to the H1N1 flu outbreak in 2009 despite having previously taken credit for it on his presidential campaign page.
In a CNN town hall Friday night, the Democratic presidential candidate was asked whether the Obama administration should have done more to prepare for another outbreak.
“I wasn’t part of it,” Biden claimed.
“Our administration spent a lot of time working with the incoming Trump administration laying out exactly what could happen with a future pandemic and that they were likely, not unlikely, to occur,” the former vice president added.
Biden’s involvement in the Obama administration’s response to the H1N1 outbreak has been scrutinized recently.
On his campaign website, the former vice president took credit for the “effective response” to the outbreak in 2009.
“He helped lead the Obama-Biden Administration’s effective response to the 2009 H1N1 pandemic and the 2014 Ebola epidemic,” the website reads.
That language remained on his website as of late Saturday morning, despite his statement during Friday’s town hall event.
In response to Biden’s criticism of Trump’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump has in return called out Biden’s leadership — or lack thereof — during the 2009 global pandemic.
“Sleepy Joe Biden was in charge of the H1N1 Swine Flu epidemic which killed thousands of people,” Trump tweeted. “The response was one of the worst on record.”
Via WesternJournal
