Conservative commentator Michael Reagan tells Newsmax that he doesn't understand why President Barack Obama has picked a political appointee to serve as the Ebola czar and not a doctor.
Obama named Democratic operative Ron Klain Friday to oversee the response by the government to the Ebola outbreak. Klain previously served as chief of staff to both Vice President Joe Biden and Al Gore.
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"Why do we have a political appointment here? Why not put a doctor?" Reagan asked John Bachman and Olga Villaverde on "America's Forum" on Newsmax TV Friday. http://www.newsmaxtv.com "If you're going to have an Ebola czar, why not put somebody in charge that really understands what is going on with Ebola?"
"What happened with the surgeon general of the United States of America? Where is the surgeon general at this point? Do we have one? I don't know because I haven't heard anything from the surgeon general, which is the top doctor in the United States of America," he said.
But, instead, "we have a political appointment — that doesn't make me feel better," Reagan explained. "I don't think that makes anybody else feel better that somebody who worked for Joe Biden and worked for Al Gore is now going to be the Czar of Ebola."
"Why not put Dr. [Mehmet] Oz in charge of it? Why not put somebody in charge who's a doctor? Somebody who works in that field and really understands it? Somebody who can talk to the people at the CDC, who can talk to the nurses at the hospitals, who can talk with some kind of knowledge of what we're facing instead of somebody who is just another political appointment?" he asked.
"I don't feel better because Ron Klain is going to be the Ebola Czar," he added. "I'd feel better if it was Dr. Oz."
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The son of former President Ronald Reagan contends that the Obama Administration's handling of the Ebola virus so far "seems to be completely upside down."
"We're seeing that we weren't prepared to take care of Ebola," he explained. "We've seen that."
"That's why everybody [that's been infected in the United States with the Ebola virus] is being moved around," he said.
"We were told that we were going to be fine, there wasn't going to be any outbreak in the U.S. and now we're saying it's not going to be a big outbreak in the U.S., which puts fear in everybody," he contends.
"The government has gotten so big, so monstrous, that in fact one side of the government doesn't know what the other side is doing and they need to get their act together in everything," he added.