McConnell says he was wrong on Obama pandemic playbook

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Thursday he was mistaken in claiming that the Obama administration had failed to leave a pandemic playbook for the Trump White House.

“I was wrong,” McConnell said in an evening interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier. “They did leave behind a plan. So, I clearly made a mistake in that regard.”

McConnell had claimed during a Monday campaign event for President Donald Trump that the current White House had not been briefed by the previous administration on preparing for a pandemic at the scale of the novel coronavirus. He also slammed former President Barack Obama for criticizing Trump’s coronavirus response (Obama had privately told former aides that it was an “absolute chaotic disaster”), saying Obama “should have kept his mouth shut.”