Obama calls Trump’s COVID-19 response as “absolute chaotic disaster”

Former US President Barack Obama harshly criticised Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic calling it an “absolute chaotic disaster,” according to a leaked web call with former members of his administration first obtained by Yahoo News.

The former president has rarely criticized his successor since leaving office in 2017, though he has been established his virus-related social media as the death toll due to the pandemic in the U.S. continues to surge

Last month, Obama tweeted that the country is still waiting for a “coherent national plan” to tackle the virus.

Obama, during the web call urged former staffers to show support for former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee who is expected to take on Trump in the November election.

“What we’re fighting against is these long-term trends in which being selfish, being tribal, being divided, and seeing others as an enemy — that has become a stronger impulse in American life,” Obama said. “It’s part of the reason why the response to this global crisis has been so anemic and spotty.”

He acknowledged that the outbtreak “would have been bad even with the best of governments,” Obama said.

It “has been an absolute chaotic disaster when that mindset — of ‘what’s in it for me’ and ‘to heck with everybody else’ — when that mindset is operationalized in our government.”

So far, at least 1,309,541 people in the U.S. have tested positive for the virus and 78,794 people have died, according to the data released by John Hopkins University.