Colorado Gov. Jared Polis was pleading with the federal government to send ventilators.
The state was starting to see hundreds of new coronavirus cases pop up each day, and Polis, a Democrat, worried that hospitals wouldn’t have enough life-saving ventilators to deal with the looming spike.
So he made an official request for ventilators through the Federal Emergency Management System, which is managing the effort. That went nowhere. He wrote to Vice President Mike Pence, leader of the White House’s coronavirus task force. That didn’t work. He tried to purchase supplies himself. The federal government swooped in and bought them.
Then, on Tuesday, five weeks after the state’s first coronavirus case, the state’s Republican Sen. Cory Gardner called President Donald Trump. The federal government sent 100 ventilators to Colorado the next day, but still only a fraction of what the state wanted.
The federal government’s haphazard approach to distributing its limited supplies has left states trying everything — filling out lengthy FEMA applications, calling Trump, contacting Pence, sending messages to Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and trade adviser Peter Navarro, who are both leading different efforts to find supplies, according to local and states officials in more than half dozen states. They’re even asking mutual friends to call Trump or sending him signals on TV and Twitter.
Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.
“This is not something that we should ever be faced with,” Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, said in an interview. “It really is the federal government’s responsibility to build those stockpiles, and distribute those during the time of crisis.”
White House Correspondent Yamiche Alcindor holds the president accountable for his actions
In Illinois, Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker got results after he tweeted at the president and complained on TV. In California, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, a frequent sparring partner for Trump, chose to instead heap praise on the president. And in Kansas, Kelly submitted seven requests for millions of masks, gowns and gloves that went unheeded until a reporter asked Pence about the situation in a briefing. Pence pledged to call her.
The confusion is indicative more broadly of how Trump and his administration have responded to a number of crises. The president often bounces from one issue to the next, reacting to the headlines of the day. Record turnover rates and competing power centers have hampered long-term planning. The result has been rotating strategies that are hard to fully chronicle.
In this instance, local and state officials of both parties say decisions seem less tied to partisan politics than they are to access to and praise of a president who has suggested he would only help local officials who were appreciative of the federal government’s efforts.
“Right now you have more discretion at the White House, and we have prized our relationship in order to secure some of the ventilators and other supplies,” said an aide to one governor, who asked that even the state not be named for fear of jeopardizing the supplies. “We operate within the world we live in. We made the decision to have a very constructive and amicable relationship.”
Source: States still baffled over how to get coronavirus supplies from Trump
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