Trump Dodges Accountability For Medical Supply Crisis By Blaming States

“Governors are supposed to be doing a lot of this work,” he said. “The federal government’s not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items and then shipping. You know, we’re not a shipping clerk. We’ll help out wherever we can.”

The president’s remarks about governors being the ones obliged to deal with mask and ventilators shortages were reminiscent of his Friday comment that “I don’t take responsibility at all” for complaints by state officials about the scarcity of testing for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.

As HuffPost reported on Tuesday , the federal government has a number of tools to spur the production of ventilators. Overall, the Trump administration’s response to the outbreak has fallen short. The president denied and downplayed the grave public health risk for weeks and has been slow to mobilize the full power of the federal government despite a rapidly growing number of infections and deaths .

Asked about reports of chaos surrounding the coronavirus testing efforts, Trump discounted any such problems. “I’m hearing very good things on the ground,” he said, without providing any specifics.

Trump’s hands-off message appeared a reversal of his announcement on Wednesday that he had signed the Defense Production Act (DPA) as part of an effort to ramp up U.S. production of emergency medical supplies. On Thursday, he said he would only utilize the DPA if it should be absolutely needed.

Vice President Mike Pence , who visited with surgical-mask maker 3M Co. this week, denied a mask shortage exists for medical workers in his comments at the briefing.

“They’re in the marketplace now. We’re going to make it clear to governors ... that those resources are now there,” he said.

The CDC earlier this week recommended that health care professionals use “homemade masks ” like bandannas if face masks are not available.

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