It did not go over well when Donald Trump told governors that, when it came to coronavirus supplies like ventilators, they should “try getting it yourselves.” The New York Times reports that Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham “both reacted angrily to the administration’s slow response to the crisis.”
“If one state doesn’t get the resources and materials they need, the entire nation continues to be at risk,” Lujan Grisham responded. Trump may not have the capacity to understand that we’re all connected to each other and that a weak response in some areas endangers us all, but Lujan Grisham is absolutely right.
Additionally, “Ms. Lujan Grisham said the federal government was impeding the states’ ability to respond to the virus and was creating a situation where the states were competing against one another for the needed products.” We need this country’s government to be working as one to keep us all safe, not a situation where governors are trying to climb over each other in a fight for scraps. But of course that’s how Trump likes to make his own staff function, through backstabbing and the like.
After the call, Trump tweeted then deleted then tweeted again that “Cuomo of New York has to ‘do more.’” Gov. Andrew Cuomo shot back “I have to do more? No—YOU have to do something! You’re supposed to be the President,” then generously offered, “Happy to do your job, too. Just give me control of the Army Corps of Engineers and I’ll take it from there.”