McConnell criticizes Obama over comments about Trump

WASHINGTON — Sen. Mitch McConnell in an online interview Monday night declared that President Barack Obama “should have kept his mouth shut” about the Trump administration’s pandemic response.

Obama made the comments, in which he described President Donald Trump’s handling of the crisis as “an absolute chaotic disaster,” in a private call with alumni of his administration that was leaked.

“I think it is a little bit classless, frankly, to criticize an administration that comes after you,” McConnell said in an interview with Lara Trump, President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law and campaign adviser.

“You had your shot — you were there for eight years,” McConnell added, referring to Obama.

McConnell, R-Ky. and the Senate majority leader, sought to shift responsibility for the pandemic and the resulting national upheaval to both China and the Obama administration, which McConnell said had not left behind “any kind of game plan” for dealing with such an outbreak.

That assertion drew criticism from veterans and allies of the Obama administration who noted that the previous administration had drawn up a National Security Council document titled Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents, which included the potential for a novel coronavirus outbreak.

“We literally left them a 69-page pandemic playbook … that they ignored,” Ron Klain, who coordinated the Obama administration’s Ebola response, said on Twitter.

McConnell said Obama should be more deferential to his successor, as their Republican presidential predecessors had been to President Bill Clinton and Obama.

“I remember President George W. Bush and his father went through eight years of Democratic administrations after they left office and kept their mouths shut because they didn’t feel it was appropriate for presidents to criticize even presidents of another party,” McConnell said.

Obama’s office did not issue a response to McConnell’s statements.