NO ONE LOOKS TO DONALD FOR GOOD JUDGEMENT:

This was the day Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) has been warning about -- and essentially predicted. Back in 2017, when the Trump administration first proposed steep cuts to programs that handle disease outbreaks, Cole said, "I promise you the president is much more likely in his term to have a deal with a pandemic than an act of terrorism. I hope he doesn't have to deal with either one, but you have to be ready to deal with both."

Now that the potential pandemic has come, Cole is re-upping his long-standing criticisms of the Trump administration's posture toward preparedness. And on Tuesday, he offered a little bit of an "I told you so," even suggesting that the situation might not be as bad if the administration had listened to him.

At a House subcommittee hearing featuring Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield, Cole offered some veiled rebukes of how the administration has worked with people like him on this issue.

"Your requirement is to come and do what you all do, and that's defend the presidential budget," Cole told Redfield and the other officials testifying. "But I would just submit for the record that administrations would be a lot better off had they listened to us several years ago in this area, and we would all collectively be better off. And I hope we all learn a lesson from that."

Cole said that the outbreak of coronavirus is a "sort of vindication of the bipartisan judgment over the last several years that this was really an area we needed to make investments."

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