WASHINGTON Six years after ridiculing predecessor Barack Obama s handling of a major health crisis and two years after dismantling the pandemic response team Obama left behind, President Donald Trump is now reinventing the infectious disease wheel.

Because of all Ive done, the risk to the American people remains very low, he said in a Wednesday evening White House news conference about the coronavirus crisis he has spent weeks downplaying. Weve had tremendous success beyond what people would have thought.

He also put Vice President Mike Pence in charge of the governments coronavirus response, while denying Pence would serve as czar a title he had mocked when Obama had used in his response to the Ebola outbreak in 2014.

Mike is not a czar. Hes vice president, Trump said.