Wednesday on CNN, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) inadvertently admitted that President Donald Trump could not “handle the job” by blaming impeachment for his administration delayed reaction to the coronavirus pandemic.

Anchor Anderson Cooper asked, “You’ve said that the president’s denials of the seriousness of the virus, in the beginning, was deadly, that it cost lives. The president and the Senate majority leader are now suggesting that impeachment distracted the president from responding to the virus. Do you buy that at all?”

Pelosi said, “I think that’s an admission that perhaps the president and the majority leader cannot handle the job. We have a life-and-death situation in our country, and they should not try to hide behind an excuse for why they did not take action, but it does admit that they did not take action. But let’s have an after-action review down the road. Right now, we have to work together to get the job done.”

She continued, “All of the statistics that we are hearing, every one of those deaths, all of that loss of life is tragic for our country. To see the big numbers, though, we have to see what we can do to stop that growth of that number of people dying. And so, yesterday we spent the day, our Democratic members on the phone almost all day, communicating with each other, with the press, with everyone we could, to say, Mr. President, implement the Defense Production Act, because our men and women, our first responders, our health care providers, our TSA, everyone who come in contact administering to the needs of people who are sick or potentially infected deserves our help. How can we be worthy of praising them, of praying for them, of thanking them, if we are not giving them what they need? The personal protective equipment that they need to do their jobs and the ventilators to save the lives that they are there to save. This is something that, regardless of what went before, that we in the here and now have to address. The president can do that by implementing the Defense Production Act.”

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