Trump to governors: You're on your own in coronavirus crisis

Donald Trump is taking “I don’t take responsibility at all” to the next level. In a Monday morning call with governors, Trump told them to find their own ventilators and other desperately needed equipment to battle the coronavirus crisis. “Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment—try getting it yourselves,” Trump told the governors, The New York Times reports. “We will be backing you, but try getting it yourselves. Point of sales, much better, much more direct if you can get it yourself.”

Does it really count as backing if the federal government only plans to help out after state-level efforts have failed? How many people are going to have to die before “We will be backing you” becomes a reality?

This call came one day after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo called for help from the Army Corps of Engineers. “You will be not able to flatten the curve to avoid the wave. You will be short thousands of ICU beds, thousands of ventilators. The only way to prevent that today given this time constraint is to deploy The Army Corps of Engineers and use that to capacity retrofit existing facilities to free up hospital beds. The decision is easy when you have no options. Here, the nation has no option,” Cuomo said Sunday. “Then,” he wrote in a New York Times op-ed, “we can designate existing hospital beds for the acutely ill.”

But Trump’s answer on Monday was clear: states and their governors are on their own. The Trump administration is not taking responsibility in the sense of stepping up to help meet the needs of the moment any more than Donald Trump is taking responsibility in the sense of admitting that he owns any part of this.

Monday, Mar 16, 2020 · 5:45:31 PM +00:00 · Laura Clawson

He is really the worst.

Just had a very good tele-conference with Nations’s Governors. Went very well. Cuomo of New York has to “do more”.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 16, 2020