LEXINGTON, Ky. _ Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell took issue with former President Barack Obama's comments on the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic. McConnell bashed Obama, and said he "should have kept his mouth shut."
"I think it's a little bit classless, frankly, to critique an administration that comes after you," McConnell said Monday night during a Trump campaign livestream event. "You had your shot; you were there for eight years. I think the tradition that the Bushes set up _ of not critiquing the president who comes after you _ is a good tradition."
In a leaked private call with people who worked with him in the White House, Obama called the Trump administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic "an absolute chaotic disaster," according to CNN.
"We know he doesn't like much this administration is doing," McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said in the livestream, which was hosted by Lara Trump, the president's daughter-in-law and campaign adviser.
McConnell also blamed Obama's administration for any lack of preparation to handle a pandemic.
"Clearly the Obama administration did not leave to this administration any kind of game plan for something like this," McConnell said.
Ronald Klain, Joe Biden's chief of staff during his vice presidency, disagreed.
"We literally left them a 69-page Pandemic Playbook ... that they ignored," Klain said in a tweet Monday night. "And an office called the Pandemic Preparedness Office ... that they abolished. And a global monitoring system called PREDICT ... that they cut by 75%."
Politico reported on the "Pandemic Playbook" in late March, and said that the Trump administration failed to follow it.
In 2018, the Trump administration disbanded an Obama administration National Security Council team focused on pandemic preparedness, and Trump and other officials have since dismissed the notion that disbanding the group hurt the country's coronavirus response, according to Time Magazine.
McConnell also commented on Gov. Andy Beshear's executive orders to keep Kentucky residents from traveling to other states or attending church services. McConnell noted that the orders had been struck down in court.
"The Democrats seem to actually prefer keeping people locked up at home," McConnell said. "And that's one of the reasons some of the governors have begun to run into trouble."
Trump has criticized the former president repeatedly during his time in office. He most recently took to Twitter to claim that Obama was involved in "Obamagate" and has retweeted users who claim Obama used his final weeks in office to target incoming officials and sabotage Trump's administration.
Trump has not clarified what crimes he thinks Obama committed, but he told reporters Monday that "the crime is very obvious to everybody."
"It's been going on for a long time," he said. "It's been going on from before I even got elected. And it's a disgrace that it happened."
