Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday said it was “a little bit classless” for former President Barack Obama to critique the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and that Mr. Obama “should have kept his mouth shut.”
“I think President Obama should have kept his mouth shut,” Mr. McConnell, Kentucky Republican, said in a livestream hosted by the Trump campaign.
“We know he doesn’t like much this administration been doing — that’s understandable,” Mr. McConnell said. “But I think it’s a little bit classless, frankly, to critique an administration that comes after you.
“You had your shot, you were there for eight years. I think the tradition that the Bushes set up of not critiquing the president that comes after you is a good tradition,” he said.
Mr. Obama made the comments in a conversation Friday night with former members of his administration.
“It would have been bad even with the best of governments,” the former president said. “It has been an absolute chaotic disaster when that mindset — of ‘what’s in it for me’ and ‘to heck with everybody else’ — when that mindset is operationalized in our government.”
