Trump’s Call With Governors Shows Confusion in U.S. Virus Fight

(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump’s video conference with state governors on Thursday was meant to highlight coordination among the nation’s top elected officials as they fight the coronavirus outbreak. Instead, it illustrated their differences.

The call, which Trump held at FEMA headquarters in Washington in front of reporters, often demonstrated the confusion around federal, state, and local efforts to combat the growing pandemic. State leaders underscored the stakes by warning they faced federal obstacles in expanding critical care facilities, problems with rolling out the widespread virus testing the White House has promised for weeks, and fears that state coffers were rapidly depleting.

The governors told the president that after he suggested they seek their own medical supplies earlier in the week, suppliers had canceled orders with state governments for a better deal: competing bids from the federal government.

“I’ve got to tell you that on three good orders, we lost to the feds,” Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, a Republican, told Trump. “I’ve got a feeling that if someone has the chance to sell to you and to sell to me, I am going to lose on every one of those.”

New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham said her state had experienced canceled orders as well and prodded the president to have the federal government coordinate the national scramble to buy vital equipment.

“It would be very useful to governors – certainly to me – if I knew what the federal government was ordering, if you know what the states were ordering, and when the expected deliveries are,” Lujan Grisham said.

‘Locally Executed’

Vice President Mike Pence had said earlier in the day that the best strategy against the virus would be “locally executed, state managed and federally supported.” But the limits of that approach were shown in the call.

Governors Brian Kemp of Georgia, a Republican, and Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island, a Democrat, told Trump that they’re concerned about state revenue shortfalls as the virus slows the U.S. economy.

“I think some of us may need that help in a matter of weeks, not months,” Raimondo said.

Multiple governors recommended the administration push for block grants – which would give states wide discretion to allocate federal dollars – as part of the White House’s plan for a $1.3 trillion stimulus package to help the nation recover from the economic impact of the virus.

Larry Hogan, the Maryland Republican who chairs the National Governors Association, said that states hoped at least half of the bill would be sent to them.

Fulfilling that request would mean replacing significant elements of the president’s plan, which calls for direct payments to American households as well as financial aid to critically impacted industries like airlines and cruise lines.

Other participants on the call identified local matters in need of federal attention. Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer asked Trump to carve out stimulus funds for auto and parts manufacturers, and received a reassurance from the president that he’d help those companies. Louisiana’s John Bel Edwards warned that coronavirus could start to exceed his state’s health care capabilities within a week and said he hadn’t heard back on a request to “surge” patients to the Veterans Affairs hospital in New Orleans.

“In the time that we have, we’ve got to increase our surge capacity,” Edwards said. “That is my biggest concern.”

He and other governors also asked Trump for increased flexibility in deploying their state National Guard. Governors have used service members to staff drive-through virus testing sites and isolation areas across the country.

Testing Shortfalls

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker – a Democrat who earlier this week criticized the administration’s handling of new travel restrictions after customs officials were overwhelmed at Chicago’s O’Hare airport – said that he’s concerned the federal government still wasn’t providing enough tests for the sites they’re asking state officials to set up.

“We understand that there are only about 5,000 tests that will be provided to us in Illinois for these drive-through testing centers and then there’s no more promised after that,” Pritzker said. “So I wanted to try to understand, if we stand them up, what will happen. That’s perhaps a day or two days of testing.”

His query was met with some resistance from Trump, who said other states “have done a lot of that themselves” as they set up testing sites. Assistant Secretary for Health Brett Giroir said the allocation of tests was based on Illinois’s initial requests.

“We can certainly provide more than 5,000 but we didn’t want to give away so much at the beginning until everyone got set up,” Giroir said.

When Prtizker said the state needed more reagents and swabs to conduct the tests and was competing with the federal government to purchase the materials, Trump cut him off.

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Trump said.

‘We Hear It’

It wasn’t the only testy exchange with a president whose disposition swung wildly depending on which governor was speaking.

Trump made his annoyance clear with South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, a Republican, who complained that important testing supplies had been unavailable or shipped to incorrect facilities. Trump pursed his lips and began swiveling in his chair as Noem spoke.

“All right,” Trump eventually interrupted, saying his federal health officials would address her concerns. “We hear it, we got you.”

Noem tried to raise additional concerns but her line dropped out of the conference.

“I believe we got cut off,” Trump said.

One governor – Utah’s Gary Herbert, a Republican – did elicit a grin from Trump as he argued that leaders should let citizens know what kind of leisure activities they could undertake while abiding by the federal recommendation to practice social distancing.

“I’d like to hear more about what we can do,” Herbert said. “For example, I know that you’d agree with this Mr. President -- golf is a great recreation, a great activity, where we have very few people and a large open space. Our golf courses ought to be a place of recreation. We probably have park areas, where we can go out there and recreate with our families and have a normalcy to our lifestyle.”

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