'The president gets an F': Nancy Pelosi grades Trump on coronavirus testing and calls him a 'weak leader'
- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appeared on "Fox News Sunday," calling President Donald Trump "weak" and a "failure" for his response to the pandemic.
- "Leaders take responsibility," she told Fox News. "So I said he's a weak leader. He doesn't take responsibility."
- The speaker also gave Trump an "F" for his control of coronavirus testing.
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is talking out against President Donal Trump's response to the coronavirus pandemic.
On Sunday, the speaker appeared on "Fox News Sunday" to talk about the state of the pandemic and the federal government's response. During the interview, she called President Trump "weak" and a "failure."
"Leaders take responsibility," she told Fox News. "So I said he's a weak leader. He doesn't take responsibility. He places blame — blame on others. And that might have been OK before, but we cannot continue down a path that is, again I'll come back to science, science, science, evidence, data on how we should go forward."
On Thursday, President Trump released a three-phase plan for states to relax stay-at-home orders and to reopen businesses. Vice President Mike Pence, speaking with NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday, said there is "sufficient capacity of testing across the country today for any state in America to go to a phase one level" of Trump's plan, adding that 150,000 COVID-19 tests are being conducted on a daily basis. Dr. Fauci said the plan to ease social distancing restrictions would work if there was enough testing, but Pelosi remains critical.
"We're way late on it and that is a failure," Pelosi said. " The president gets an F, a failure on the testing."
Pelosi reiterated her thoughts in an interview with ABC's "This Week" Sunday.
"He failed," the Speaker told ABC. "He's failed in the testing and the rest, and [said] 'it's a hoax' and 'it's going to magically disappear.' That's not based on science. This isn't magical. This is scientific."
Pelosi also touched upon the idea of giving more money to small businesses during the pandemic and lockdown orders.
"We want to add more money there," Pelosi said. "It is very urgent though that we support our police and fire, our health care workers, our nurses, our teachers...That's what the state and local government is about, is meeting the needs of the coronavirus. And everything that we're doing is about the coronavirus, understand that."
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