White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Friday (Feb. 4) blamed the public health measures widely imposed at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic—otherwise known as “lockdowns”—on former president Donald Trump, after she was asked about a new Johns Hopkins study that found they did not have a significant positive effect.
Psaki first pointed reporters to the administration’s medical experts to answer what was a scientific question. She then added: “I would note that the president has been clear we’re not pushing lockdown, so we’ve not been pro-lockdown.”
Psaki stressed that such restrictive measures have “not been” on President Joe Biden’s “agenda” and recalled that the widespread adoption of these policies occurred under Trump, not Biden.
“Most of the lockdowns actually happened under the previous president,” she said.