Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellGOP Rep. Pete King to buck party, vote for Democrats' coronavirus relief bill In win for privacy hawks, Senate adds more legal protections to FISA bill The Hill's Campaign Report: Democrat concedes in California House race MORE (R-Ky.) on Thursday walked back comments made earlier this week that the Obama administration didn't leave behind a "game plan" for a pandemic.
"I was wrong," McConnell said when asked about his comments during a Fox News interview.
"They did leave behind a plan. I clearly made a mistake in that regard,” he said.
“As to whether or not the plan was followed and who is the critic and all the rest, I don’t have any observation about that because I don’t know enough about the details of that ... to comment on it in any detail,” he added.
McConnell's comments come after he appeared to blame the Obama administration for not leaving guidelines behind for the Trump White House during the transition in 2017. President Trump
Donald John TrumpHouse Judiciary chairman hints at subpoenaing Barr Florida election supervisors urge DeSantis to 'act immediately' to make voting safe amid pandemic Paul claims Biden 'caught red-handed' eavesdropping on Flynn MORE and his allies have made similar remarks.
"They claim pandemics only happen once every hundred years but what if that's no longer true? We want to be early, ready for the next one, because clearly the Obama administration did not leave to this administration any kind of game plan for something like this," McConnell said during a Trump campaign event with Lara Trump
Lara Lea TrumpObama criticism gets under GOP's skin Ex-GOP chairman slams McConnell for saying Obama should 'keep his mouth shut' McConnell: Obama 'should have kept his mouth shut' on Trump's coronavirus response MORE.
His comments sparked backlash from former Obama administration officials.
Ronald Klain, who was the Ebola coordinator for the Obama administration, tweeted that "we literally left them a 69-page Pandemic Playbook.... that they ignored."
"And an office called the Pandemic Preparedness Office... that they abolished. And a global monitoring system called PREDICT .. that they cut by 75%" he added.
Jeremy Konyndyk, who previously served as the director of USAID’s Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance, told CNN that the Trump administration was "extensively briefed" on the plan during the transition.
The White House has garnered criticism in the midst of the coronavirus for a 2018 decision to disband the National Security Council's global health unit, a decision former national security adviser John Bolton
John BoltonTrump company lawyer warned Michael Cohen not to write 'tell-all' book: report Bolton book release delayed — again — amid government review The truth about the dangerous nuclear policy pushed by Mrs. America's Phyllis Schlafly MORE characterized as a "streamlining."
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