A March 29 story in the Washington Monthly sheds light on what lay behind Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s inability to secure desperately-needed ventilators from her longtime vendors. Its headline ran: “What If Trump Decides to Save Republicans But Not Democrats?”

A sub-headline read: “He’s providing vital resources to red states and ignoring blue states.” 

Florida submitted a request to FEMA on March 11 for 430,000 surgical masks, 180,000 N95 respirators, 82,000 face shields and 238,000 gloves—and received a shipment with everything three days later.

President Donald Trump wasn’t simply refusing to provide states with vitally-needed medical supplies—he was illegally seizing those supplies that states have ordered.

An April 20 Forbes story chronicled the steps taken by Maryland Governor Larry Hogan to prevent the Trump administration from confiscating 500,000 COVID test kits ordered from South Korea.

Hogan had heard that the federal government had confiscated crucial medical supplies from other states—like Massachusetts. 

Hogan ordered the test kits flown into Baltimore–Washington International Airport rather than the larger Dulles International Airport in Virginia. They were then escorted under guard to a secret location and constantly protected by the National Guard.

President Donald Trump didn’t simply refuse to provide states with vitally-needed medical supplies. He illegally ordered the seizure of those supplies that states have ordered.

Hospitals in Florida and California reported that FEMA had seized their supplies without explanation.

Massachusetts ordered three million masks that were confiscated by the Federal Government at the Port of New York. This forced the state to ask New England Patriots’ owner Robert Kraft to use his team plane to fly in one million N95 masks from China. 

N95 mask

When Trump learned that Maryland Governor Larry Hogan had obtained 500,000 test kits from South Korea, he said: “I don’t think he needed to go to South Korea. I think he needed to get a little knowledge.”

Hogan responded: “The president said the governors are on their own and they should really focus on getting their own tests, and that’s exactly what we did.”

The Federal Government has seized vitally-needed medical supplies in at least seven states. FEMA is not publicly reporting the thefts, despite the outlay of millions of dollars of taxpayer money. Nor has the administration explained how it decides which supplies to seize and where to reroute them.

The Federal Government has not informed states whose supplies it seized if they will receive the materials they ordered and paid for. That has fueled concerns about whether the Trump administration is fairly distributing scarce medical supplies.

“We can’t get any answers,” said a California hospital official who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation from the White House.

Trump has said it’s the states’ responsibility to obtain critically-needed medical supplies. But when they aren’t outbid by the Federal Government, hospital systems and states find their shipments of medical supplies seized with no explanation.

Where are those supplies going?

To China?

To Trump’s private warehouses?

To Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, for sale on the black market?

No one as yet knows. 

A March 29 story in the Washington Monthly carried the frightening headline: “What If Trump Decides to Save Republicans But Not Democrats?” A a sub-headline read: “He’s providing vital resources to red states and ignoring blue states.”  

And it concluded ominously: “What if the White House simply gives all the masks and ventilators to red states and counties, leaving blue ones to struggle? What mechanisms of accountability are left?

“U.S. democracy wasn’t set up to deal with a president openly behaving like a James Bond villain while being protected by a political party behaving more like a mafia than a civic institution.”     

STAGE SIX: PROPAGANDA DISGUISED AS NEWS

Since Easter weekend, President Donald Trump held almost 50 daily press briefings at the White House. 

Their official purpose: To update the country on the administration’s ongoing response to the Coronavirus pandemic.

Their real purpose: To serve as a substitute for Trump’s hate-filled political rallies, which have been likened to those staged by Germany’s Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, at Nuremberg.

These had been temporarily cancelled due to demands for social distancing to stem the rising tide of the COVID-19 pandemic. That has been Trump’s primary reason for seeking to end social distancing.

The White House tried hard to stage-manage these appearances. For example, on April 14, Trump interrupted the question-and-answer session by cutting to a White House-produced video to try to shame the media for critical coverage of his response to the crisis. 

On April 26, The New York Times ran a story entitled: “Self-praise, hubris and self-pity: Examining 260,000 words about the Coronavirus from President Trump.” Summing up the image that Trump has tried to present of himself to the world, the Times concluded: 

“The self-regard, the credit-taking, the audacious rewriting of recent history to cast himself as the hero of the pandemic rather than the president who was slow to respond: Such have been the defining features of Trump’s use of the bully pulpit during the coronavirus outbreak….

“By far the most recurring utterances from Trump in the [White House] briefings are self-congratulations, roughly 600 of them, which are often predicated on exaggerations and falsehoods….”