President Joe Biden laughed when asked about the administration’s handling of the COVID-19 surges.
ABC News’ David Muir mentioned comments made by Vice President Kamala Harris about how the administration did not see the variant surges coming.
Biden laughed when asked how he got it “wrong,” adding, “How did we get it wrong? Nobody saw it coming. Nobody in the whole world. Who saw it coming?”
The ABC News anchor noted Biden told Americans on July 4, “We’re closer than ever to our independence from a deadly virus.”
He asked Biden, “Do you think you overpromised?”
The president responded, “No, we were closer than ever. But there’s a lot we don’t know.”
Biden suggested Muir was going to ask him if the country would be able to overcome the virus, adding, “The answer is the expectation is yes because we have the best scientists in the world… but we don’t know for certain.”
Muir then asked Biden, “What would you say to some Americans who might say this feels like we’re chasing Omicron instead of being ahead of it, fully prepared for it?”
He explained, “Well, look, Omicron only really came on the scene just before Thanksgiving. We weren’t talking about Omicron six months ago, but it’s just recent. And so we are chasing Omicron. But the fact of the matter is you’re chasing whatever comes on the scene that hadn’t wasn’t there before, and this wasn’t there this last summer, for example.”
Watch the interview below:
Clarifying his question, Muir asked, “So did the administration not expect that there could be moments like this one where you’d have a highly transmissible variant responsible around the corner?”
Acknowledging it is “possible” for another variant to come along, Biden continued, “You plan for what you think is available, that is the most likely threat that existed at the time, and you respond to it.”
He added, “And I think that that’s exactly what we’ve done. And that’s why, for example, Omicron is spreading rapidly, but the death rates are much, much lower than they were. This is not March of 2020. This is a very different time than we’re in now.”
Last week Harris told the Los Angeles Times, the administration “didn’t see Delta coming. I think most scientists did not — upon whose advice and direction we have relied — didn’t see Delta coming.”
Additionally, she said they did not see “Omicron coming. And that’s the nature of what this, this awful virus has been, which, as it turns out, has mutations and variants.”
