Biden's ex-COVID adviser faults Trump administration for "deadly sins" at start of pandemic

Washington — Andy Slavitt, who until last week was President Biden's senior adviser for the COVID-19 response, said Sunday that the Trump administration committed three "deadly sins" in its handling of the coronavirus pandemic that cost American lives. 

In an interview with "Face the Nation," Slavitt said the country would have grappled with the pandemic last year regardless of who was in the White House, but detailed the three errors made by the prior administration: Former President Donald Trump's downplaying of the virus and its existence; his quashing of dissent from public health experts; and his stoking of divisions across the country. "I think that sort of the populist nature, being a populist during a pandemic is really not a great combination because you're going to have to make some tough decisions. You're going to have to make people unhappy," Slavitt told "Face the Nation." "And I think Trump saw in his base a stirring of anti-mask characterizations and other things, and he played into those things because, I think it felt like a different route. And I think those three things were things that were, you know, cost us a lot of lives."