President Donald Trump on Sunday criticized Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and “a very small group” of other governors for “blaming” his administration “for their own shortcomings.”
“.@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. “We are there to back you up should you fail, and always will be!”
Pritzker responded to Trump on Twitter soon after, saying, “You wasted precious months when you could’ve taken action to protect Americans & Illinoisans.”
“You should be leading a national response instead of throwing tantrums from the back seat,” he added. “Where were the tests when we needed them? Where’s the PPE? Get off Twitter & do your job.”
“I want to thank the many public servants in the military, in @fema & other parts of the fed. government who are actually doing the work to keep people safe,” he added. “My staff and I are grateful for your experience and your willingness to act courageously on behalf of your fellow American.”
Trump’s tweets came after several governors, including Pritzker, appeared on Sunday’s political talk shows to detail their states’ needs and on how their states are working in conjunction with the federal government. Many pointed to a lack of critical supplies like masks for hospital workers as being among their biggest needs at the moment.
Trump has faced sustained criticism over his response to the pandemic, which he initially called a “hoax” in late February. In the weeks since then, he has offered overly optimistic timelines and given the public false or misleading statements about measures the administration has taken, including claiming that a malaria drug had been approved to treat COVID-19. The FDA quickly walked back his comment, saying that the drug still needed to undergo testing.
Speaking with CNN’s “State of the Union,” Pritzker said the federal government’s response to the crisis has improved since earlier this month but that Illinois has received only about a quarter of the personal protective equipment that it has requested from the Trump administration.
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“We … got a call this morning, before I went on the air, that we’re going to receive another shipment of PPE later today or tomorrow from FEMA,” he said. “But it’s a fraction still of what we have requested. We need millions of masks and hundreds of thousands of gowns and gloves and the rest. And, unfortunately, we’re getting still just a fraction of that.”
Pritzker said that, as a result, his state has to compete on the open market — against other states — for those items. Trump has pushed for states to secure masks and other essential items on their own.
“We’re all competing against each other. This should have been a coordinated effort by the federal government,” he said. “And the national defense authorization that the president has to essentially push this manufacturing really hasn’t gone into effect in any way. And, so, yes, we’re competing against each other. We’re competing against other countries. It’s a … Wild West, I would say, out there. And, indeed, we’re overpaying, I would say, for PPE because of that competition.”
Pritzker echoed other governors who spoke Sunday. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, said the lack of PPE equipment “is a problem that everyone’s been talking about for a week.”
“We pushed for action and we are getting progress,” Hogan said. “Now it’s not nearly enough, it’s not fast enough, we’re way behind the curve, but … we’re trying to figure out what to do moving forward. They are making progress, it’s not fast enough, but on all of those things, on respirators, on PPEs, on the masks, on the tests. We’re ramping up.”
Hogan added that “failures were made and things should’ve happened sooner.”
“But I just want to focus on where we go from here, because our job is to save the citizens,” he continued.
On ABC’s “This Week,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said his state is “desperate for more PPE equipment, personal protective equipment.”
“We’ve had a big ask into the strategic stockpile in the White House,” he said. “They’ve given us a fraction of our ask. We are, as a state, private sector, public sector, non-profits turning over every stone, but we need a lot more PPE, both to protect our health care workers and to treat the sick.”
He also highlighted the need for immediate assistance to workers who are displaced because of the crisis and said he hopes the federal government can pick up 100 percent of the costs for the states.
Also on that program, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said her biggest issue is still not having enough test kits available, saying that her state needs “better data’ in order to make important decisions moving forward.
“We’re all building the airplane as we fly it right now,” she said. “We’re doing the best that we can. We’re going to continue to be aggressive and we’re continually monitoring what the next move we can make is. But we need the federal government to get us those test kits. We need PPEs, as Phil was just saying, we need clear, directive and — guidance from the Federal Government. And frankly a patchwork strategy of each state doing what they can is — we’re going to do it if we have to but it would be nice to have a national strategy.”
Speaking with “Fox News Sunday,” Whitmer echoed her assessment of the state of coronavirus testing, saying everyone had “too few test kits” from the get-go.
“Right now we’ve got to prioritize those who are most medically vulnerable for the testing, and that doesn’t really give you enough data to feel like you’re making decisions that are based on facts and science,” she said.