I've been wondering about this myself. Lord knows there will be plenty of hindsight and blame-spreading when this is all over, but from where we stand now, it seems odd to insist the president would have needed to specifically instruct CDC to get ready for the coronavirus.
It's their JOB, isn't it? Theoretically their top priority? Global news began buzzing with dreadful accounts of the highly infectious Wuhan virus in December, but CDC was waiting for Trump to tell it to start getting tests and supplies ready? What was higher on the to-do list?
The Trump administration didn't have a whole lot to do with CDC until now - the big phony Dem talking point about "cutting its budget" is based on a presidential proposal that wasn't implemented (none of them ever are these days.) CDC has a vast staff and enormous funding.
The guy at the top will always take some of the blame - it comes with the job - but I wouldn't fault Trump too much for assuming the top brass at CDC and other health agencies were taking the most obvious and common-sense preparatory measures.
I also wouldn't fault Trump too much for being surprised to learn the system actually has roadblocks that make quick and effective epidemic response difficult. Would you think, upon succeeding the president in charge during the H1N1 epidemic, that would be the case?
The fascinating thing about the Democrats' "Trump cut CDC funding" lie is that none of them bothered to actually READ the unimplemented White House budget proposal in question. It talked about CDC getting distracted from its core mission by excessive staff and bureaucratic creep.
Everything I've seen so far buttresses that analysis. There really is no excuse for a gigantic government swimming in money, bursting with personnel, and top-heavy with management to be paralyzed unless the chief executive comes in and micro-manages every agency. /end
