Wednesday on MSNBC’s “The Last Word,” House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), one of the House impeachment managers of the impeachment of President Donald Trump, said those blaming impeachment for Trump’s delayed reaction to the coronavirus pandemic were acknowledging “the administration screwed up this response.”

O’Donnell asked, “Mitch McConnell said that he believes that the impeachment trial in the Senate slowed down the federal government’s response to the pandemic. What’s your response to that?”

Schiff said, “Yeah, the president said something similar, which, you know, was an interesting acknowledgment that the administration screwed up this response. The facts are quite clear that the president’s weeks long, maybe months-long delay in taking this seriously has had catastrophic consequences that we are only now beginning to see the scope of.”

He added, “They should stop making excuses. The president found plenty of time even during the impeachment trial and the period after to play golf, go on vacation at Mar-a-Lago, to do campaign rallies. He wasn’t distracted from doing the things he loves to do, but the bigger problem is after the trial was over, the president continued for weeks and weeks to say this is no problem. He’s got it under control. He’s got it contained, and this isn’t going to have a big impact on the country. Of course, he was ignoring the advice of the health experts, the epidemiologists, the CDC, his own people with catastrophic consequences.”

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