Every day we see and hear the desperate pleas of governors and health care workers across the country for the PPE, tests and ventilators needed to save the lives of Americans and which, even now, they are not receiving from the Trump administration.

The refusal of the Trump administration to oversee, coordinate and lead the effort to obtain these vital goods, and the mindless insistence that all the states compete with one another and with the federal government to acquire them, has resulted in an immense duplication and waste of governmental effort, ruinous and counter-productive competition, the squandering of precious time and disastrous escalations in the prices of these vital goods.

Americans are continuing to pay a heavy price for Trump’s initial denials of the reality of coronavirus, his bizarre belief that it would just go away, and his irresponsible insistence that his administration would not accept the responsibility of going on war footing and using the full power of the federal government to produce essential life-saving PPE, tests and ventilators. 

The inaccurate and misleading statements and constant self-congratulation in Trump’s daily press briefings are in stark contrast to the desperate pleas of health care providers across the country, workers who are on the front lines of the pandemic and whose PPE, tests and ventilators simply are not being provided by the Trump administration. Even now, Trump continues to be in denial concerning the inadequacy of tests and the desperate need for ventilators.

Trump’s continuing refusal to use the full powers provided to him under the Defense Protection Act and to bring the full power of the presidency to bear has resulted in a totally inadequate response to this national emergency. The pandemic is spreading and hundreds of thousands of additional lives are being, and will be, unnecessarily lost unless the president acts now to fully use the powers available to him. Further delay is inexcusable.