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- ABC News
- April 15, 2020
Trump: Some states could reopen before May
He said 20 states are in "extremely good shape."
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At the same time, the president ended his news conference with a warning to governors if they don't do what he considers to be a good job reopening.
\"Lots of positive things are happening. If the governors don't do a good job, we will come down on them very hard,\" Trump said.
President Trump says governors will make decision on when to reopen the economy in their individual states.
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) April 14, 2020
\"If we disagree with it, we’re not going to let them open…we’re there to watch, we’re there to help, but we’re also there to be critics.\" https://t.co/bISM7ReHdH pic.twitter.com/5m9zlEBaXB
Trump announced he was putting a hold on U.S. funding for the World Health Organization, a move he has signaled for weeks as he tries to shift blame for his response to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
\"I'm instructing my administration to halt funding of the World Health Organization while a review is conducted to assess the world health organization's role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus,\" Trump said in an extended diatribe, arguing the organization was against his travel ban to China.
\"They were very much opposed to what we did. Fortunately, I was not convinced and suspended travel from China, saving untold numbers of lives,\" he said.
The U.S. is the largest donor to the world health agency by far and makes its contribution annually.
While Trump criticized the WHO for what he called a failure \"to investigate credible reports from sources in Wuhan that conflicted directly with the Chinese government's official accounts,\" the president had previously praised President Xi and China for \"their effort and transparency\" in handling the pandemic.
China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 24, 2020
President Trump says if the U.S. \"cannot trust\" WHO’s actions, \"our country will be forced to find other ways to work with other nations to achieve public health goals.\"
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) April 14, 2020
\"We will continue to engage with the WHO to see if it can make meaningful reforms.\" https://t.co/bISM7ReHdH pic.twitter.com/MPuilCMjWs
President Trump said that the \"scariest\" day of his life was about a month ago when he was told the nation had a possible ventilator shortage.
\"The scariest day of my life was about a month ago when, after a long day of meetings, my team told me that we were going to be needing 130,000 ventilators but we were short hundreds of thousands of ventilators,\" Trump said.
President Trump: \"The scariest day of my life was about a month ago when after a long day of meetings, my team told me that we were going to be needing 130,000 ventilators — that we were short hundreds of thousands of ventilators.\" https://t.co/bISM7ReHdH pic.twitter.com/OPMiTKHAyb
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) April 14, 2020
He then shifted the blame to governors and the previous administration for the shortage.
\"This is the system we inherited. And we look at the states, the states were not prepared,\" he said.
\"Would we be able to prevent Americans from dying because we couldn't get them ventilators? I instructed my team to where heaven and Earth to make sure that this didn't happen,\" Trump said.
From earlier today:
In an interview with the Associated Press, Dr. Anthony Fauci acknowledged Tuesday the country does not yet have the critical testing and contact tracing procedures needed to safely begin reopening the nation's economy, as the White House prepares to announce a council to do just that -- and \"ahead of schedule,\" according to the president.
\"We have to have something in place that is efficient and that we can rely on, and we're not there yet,\" Fauci told The AP.
He called the possibility of opening businesses by May 1 \"a bit overly optimistic\" for many areas of the country and repeated his suggestion that any easing off the social distancing guidelines should happen on a \"rolling\" basis.
Fauci also said the White House briefings can be \"really draining\" and signaled that his time might be better spent directing government research.
\"If I had been able to just make a few comments and then go to work, that would have really been much better,\" he said. \"It isn't the idea of being there and answering questions, which I really think is important for the American public. It's the amount of time.\"
It's not uncommon for the president's briefings to last more than two hours.
Echoing legislation that a bipartisan group of senators authored to protect special counsel Robert Mueller during the Russia investigation, Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., is looking to shield Fauci from being fired by President Trump for anything other than \"malfeasance, neglect of office, or incapacity.\"
\"We cannot allow Donald Trump to silence Dr. Fauci or any other government scientists,\" Markey said in a statement. \"This legislation will close the hole in the law that currently allows the President to fire a National Institutes of Health Director such as Dr. Fauci for any reason. Educating the public about the science and the facts that will save lives is not, and should never be, a firing offense.\"
The bill comes one day after the White House pushed back at new speculation that Fauci's fate was at risk, trying to tamp down questions raised after Trump himself he retweeted a tweet that included the hashtag \"#FireFauci.\"
When senators proposed similar legislation to protect Mueller, it surfaced significant constitutional concerns, including separation of powers, so it's unclear if this would get bipartisan support.
--ABC News' Trish Turner
After the president claimed his has \"total authority\" to set the terms of a nationwide reopening, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo told CNN this morning: \"If he ordered me to reopen, in a way that would endanger the public health of the people of my state, I wouldn't do it.\"
Hours later, Trump went on Twitter to say that New York has been reliant on him in responding to the coronavirus in the nation's hardest-hit state, but that \"now he seems to want Independence!\"
\"That won't happen!\" Trump added.
Cuomo's been calling daily, even hourly, begging for everything, most of which should have been the state's responsibility, such as new hospitals, beds, ventilators, etc. I got it all done for him, and everyone else, and now he seems to want Independence! That won't happen!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 14, 2020
Trump also tweeted this morning about one his \"all-time favorite movies,\" the 1962 film \"Mutiny on the Bounty,\" appearing to issue a metaphorical warning to the nation’s governors to follow in line.
Tell the Democrat Governors that \"Mutiny On The Bounty\" was one of my all time favorite movies. A good old fashioned mutiny every now and then is an exciting and invigorating thing to watch, especially when the mutineers need so much from the Captain. Too easy!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 14, 2020
\"The Constitution does not go out the window in an emergency,\" said Cuomo, in another phone interview with CNN after the president's remarks Monday. \"We don't have a king. We have an elected president.\"
Even members of Trump's own party have acknowledged the president does not have \"total authority,\" as he suggested.
Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, House GOP Conference Chair, pointed to rights reserved to states by quoting the Constitution on Monday night, and saying \"the federal government does not have absolute power.\"
The federal government does not have absolute power.
— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) April 13, 2020
\"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.\" United States Constitution, Amendment X