what the facts are
Mr. Trump said he was not responsible for disbanding the White House’s pandemic team.
what Mr. Trump said
“When you say me, I didn’t do it. We have a group of people I could ask — perhaps my administration — but I could perhaps ask Tony about that because I don’t know anything about it.”
This is misleading. The top White House official tasked with leading the country’s response to a pandemic left the administration in May 2018 and his team was disbanded by Mr. Trump’s national security adviser at the time, John R. Bolton, The Washington Post has reported.
While there is no evidence that Mr. Trump personally directed the ousting of these officials, he also did not replace them in the nearly two years since, despite repeated bipartisan urgings from lawmakers and experts.
What the Facts Are
Mr. Trump inaccurately described a website in development to mitigate the outbreak.
What Mr. Trump Said
“I want to thank Google. Google is helping to develop a website, it’s going to be very quickly done, unlike websites of the past, to determine whether a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location.”
This is misleading. Mr. Trump misstated the company developing the website and exaggerated its scope. After Mr. Trump spoke, Google issued a statement on Twitter from Verily, a separate subsidiary of Google’s parent company.
“We are developing a tool to help triage individuals for Covid-19 testing. Verily is in the early stages of development, and planning to roll testing out in the Bay Area, with the hope of expanding more broadly over time,” the statement read.
A spokeswoman for Verily said it had originally intended for the website to be only used by health care workers. Mr. Trump’s statement prompted the company to make it available to the public. The site will direct people to “pilot sites” for testing in the Bay Area, the spokeswoman said.
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