Political Quotes

“I just don't really understand what I just heard, when the President went straight to the American people and told them it was going to disappear. He said it was a Democratic, liberal hoax to bring down his campaign. But look at a little history. I wear on my lapel a picture of a canary in a birdcage. It was given to me at a workers' Memorial Day rally, a rally to honor workers who had been injured or killed on the job. This canary in the birdcage--you know, the mine workers used to take it down in the mines 120 years ago. If the canary died, the mine worker got out of the mine. He knew that he didn't have a union that was very strong or a government that cared very much. He was on his own. So I always cared a lot about public health. That is really the best prevention for the canary in the mine. I wrote a letter to President Trump in 2018, after he had closed the Office of Global Health Security in the White House and essentially fired or transferred Dr. Ziemer, a Bush appointee who was one of the world's great malaria doctors. His job--he had 40 people on his staff. His job was to surveil the world and look at potential disease outbreaks that might turn into an epidemic which then might evolve into a pandemic. That was his job. The President eliminated the office. And I wrote a letter to the President asking him to reinstate it, and he didn't even answer the letter. Then, the following year, 2019, he brought Dr. Linda Quick home from China.…”