“Obama out:” President Barack Obama’s hilarious final White House correspondents’ dinner speech

I had to just let you know that Trump hurt our country. The only thing that was good was he had a great economy that Obama saved and Trump fought with China and tried to kill our economy and now we don’t have any friends and now we have Biden; he is doing a good job but you hate him. He is doing fine and he loves America. He has given his whole life to politics so I have to say he is a real President. So when you see this know Obama, Biden and Bush were real presidents and Trump let his Son In law run for President and do all the work he just played golf. I remember Trump’s sons saying that running America was not as hard As running Trump enterprises you did not have the ability to kill A million Americans. China where the virus started only had 4000 deaths and America has 800000 and counting. Trump’s people fail in love with a liar and chief and they love him for real. God help us if Biden does not run again because the love of the country is not enough to convince Trump’s followers to let him go, They would die for Trump like a Prince song. Like January 6th insurrection. Trump did that and it will come out. Fake news is real and fake Trump is for real. This is the truth Trump wanted to steal the election, not Biden. He lied about 9/11. Trump was just a real liar and caused death of his followers,

Hear the calls Trump made as he tried to steal the election and he wanted to steal election. He lied about 9/11

A pandemic plan was in place. Trump abandoned it — and science — in the face of Covid-19

President Obama was bothered. It was the summer of 2009 and he was in a meeting at the White House to talk about preparations for an expected autumn outbreak of swine flu. Elbows on the table, he thumbed through the pages of a report on preparations for it.

“So,” he asked no one in particular, “if you guys are so smart, how come you’re still making this in eggs?” he asked, referring to the nearly century-old process for making vaccines in chicken eggs.

Those around the table erupted into laughter. The president’s quip was a moment of levity at an otherwise serious meeting.

The “smart guys” the president was jesting with were the members of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology or PCAST. Founded in 1990 by President George H. W. Bush, the council, administered by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), is an advisory group of scientists and engineers appointed by the President to augment the science advice he receives from other White House advisors, departments, and agencies.

In June 2009, the recently inaugurated Obama had given his PCAST advisors their first assignment: What does the president need to do to prepare for an influenza pandemic? Five weeks later, on Aug. 7, they gave him their answers at a meeting in the White House’s State Dining Room.

The story of this meeting and the ensuing eight years of science-informed policymaking, which I have drawn from interviews with members of PCAST and internet archives of documents, show a president comfortable with having back-and-forth discussions with an assembly of some of the nation’s top scientific minds. The president was committed to integrating science into his day-to-day decisions. One of those decisions was how to plan for and respond to the outbreak of a pandemic illness.

Over the course of the Obama presidency, a pandemic infrastructure was put in place. It included recommendations for a top-level White House official devoted to planning and responding to emerging infectious threats and, to guide that person’s work, the “Playbook for early response to high-consequence emerging infectious disease threats and biological incidents.”

And then on Jan. 21, 2017, Donald Trump became president.

Beginning the morning after his inauguration, a spectacular science-related tragedy has unfolded. The Trump administration has systematically dismantled the executive branch’s science infrastructure and rejected the role of science to inform policy, essentially reversing both Republican and Democrat presidential administrations since World War II, when Vannevar Bush, an engineer, advised Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman.

President Trump’s pursuit of anti-science policy has been so effective that as the first cases of Covid-19 were breaking out in Wuhan, China, no meaningful science policy infrastructure was in place to advise him. As a consequence, America is suffering from a pandemic without a plan. Our responses are ineffectual and inconsistent. We are increasingly divided by misinformation and invidious messaging. And it’s not even over.

To understand how Trump walked America into this mess, and that his recent claim he “inherited practically nothing” in pandemic preparedness from the previous administration is plainly wrong, it helps to have a picture of the infrastructure he neglected and ignored.

Facts will drive scientific decisions, not the other way around

On April 27, 2009, on the eve of his 100th day in office, Obama made a five-block trip from the White House to 2101 Constitution Ave. There, in the Great Hall of the National Academy of Sciences, he spoke about his administration’s commitment to science.

“Science is more essential for our prosperity, our security, our health, our environment, and our quality of life than it has ever been before,” he announced. He introduced the members of PCAST and explained how his administration would engage the scientific community directly in the work of public policy.

“I want to be sure that facts are driving scientific decisions — and not the other way around,” the president said. The audience broke into laughter.

Obama explained that his science advisers were already briefing him daily on the emerging threat of swine flu, which some were projecting could kill thousands of Americans.

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