‘Don’t blame me for your shortcomings’ Donald Trump tells governors it’s their fault they have shortages in medical equipment and insists the federal government ‘will always be here to back you up’
- Donald Trump took aim at governors who have been critical of the federal government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak
- He claimed their own ‘shortcomings’ are to blame for their shortages of medical equipment and supplies
- Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker is especially critical of Trump
- He claimed in an interview Sunday morning that he only received a ‘fraction’ of equipment he requested from the federal government
- He also shot back at Trump in a tweet telling him to ‘Get off Twitter & do your job’
- ‘You should be leading a national response instead of throwing tantrums from the back seat,’ he said
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Donald Trump insisted Sunday that it isn’t the federal government’s fault that states can’t get necessary medical equipment to address the coronavirus outbreak.
‘@JBPritzker, Governor of Illinois, and a very small group of certain other Governors, together with Fake News @CNN & Concast (MSDNC), shouldn’t be blaming the Federal Government for their own shortcomings,’ Trump tweeted Sunday morning.
‘We are there to back you up should you fail, and always will be!’ the president vowed.
But the Illinois governor shot back at the president.
‘You wasted precious months when you could’ve taken action to protect Americans & Illinoisans,’ Pritzker retorted on Twitter.
‘You should be leading a national response instead of throwing tantrums from the back seat,’ he continued. ‘Where were the tests when we needed them? Where’s the PPE?’
‘Get off Twitter & do your job,’ Pritzker demanded.
Donald Trump took aim at governors who have been critical of the federal government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak, claiming their own ‘shortcomings’ are to blame for a lack of medical equipment and supplies
Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker is especially critical of Trump, claiming in an interview Sunday morning that he only received a ‘fraction’ of equipment he requested
Pritzker shot back at the president on Twitter, telling him to ‘get off Twitter & do your job’ and criticizing Trump for ‘throwing tantrums from the backseat’
Several governors, including New York’s Andrew Cuomo, have said they are working closely with the president to ensure they receive medical supplies and equipment to meet the growing demand of hospitals and medical centers.
Others, however, like Pritzker, claim the federal government isn’t doing enough and says of the states: ‘We’re all competing against each other.’
‘We have received some PPE [protective personal equipment] in the past couple of weeks – about a quarter of what was an original request,’ he said in an interview with CNN’s State of the Union Sunday morning.
‘We’re going to receive another shipment of PPE later today or tomorrow from FEMA – but it’s a fraction still of what we requested,’ he continued. ‘We need millions of masks and hundreds of thousands of gowns and gloves and the rest. Unfortunately, we’re getting, still, just a fraction of that. So we’re out on the open market, competing for these items that we so badly need and we’re succeeding in some ways but we still need more.’
Trump has taken to holding daily press briefings to update the press and Americans on the progression of the coronavirus pandemic and what is being done at the federal level to address the outbreak.
He said this week that governors should use their own supply chains and connections to obtain medical equipment and supplies, claiming it would likely be faster than waiting on it from the federal government.
Some governors were furious over this suggestion, demanding that they be sent more masks, ventilators and respirators to deal with the growing demand at hospitals and medical centers.
While Trump holds his daily briefings with the coronavirus task force at the White House, Andrew Cuomo has held a daily update as he leads the state with by far the most cases of the respiratory disease.
A Vanity Fair reported claimed her sources who are in touch with the White House say Trump is ‘furious’ that Cuomo’s briefings are getting better reviews than his own.
‘My sources who are in touch with the White House, several people told me that one of the things driving this is that the president has been furious and frustrated at New York Governor Andrew Cuomo who has been holding these very widely well-received early morning press conferences and, in the president’s view, has sort of hijacked the news cycle,’ the reporter said in an appearance on MSNBC’s Am Joy Sunday.