Amid critical shortages, Trump bets on businesses to do the right thing

Doesn't want to get heavy-handed

Last Wednesday, President Donald Trump invoked the Defense Production Act, which empowers him to order companies to ramp up production of critical supplies for the coronavirus fight. But he hasn't issued any such order.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and other state and local leaders are demanding: Why not?

"The situation is that critical," Cuomo said Sunday. With 6,000 ventilators, the state is still far short of the 30,000 projected to be needed if the outbreak surges, he said. Without them, "we can lose lives that we could have otherwise saved," Cuomo said. By relying on the private market, the governor said, the states are competing against one another for vital items such as masks, driving up the price from 85 cents to $7 for each one.

But Trump adviser Peter Navarro said at Sunday's White House briefing that companies are stepping up, and "we're getting what we need without putting the heavy hand of government down." Trump said the act gives him leverage, but "we're a country not based on nationalizing our business." Nationalization would be a big step further than what Trump is being asked to do.

Trump tweeted a jab at another Democratic governor, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, who complained the federal government isn't doing enough fast enough to relieve shortages of protective equipment. Pritzker "and a very small group of certain other governors … shouldn’t be blaming the federal government for their own shortcomings. We are there to back you up should you fail, and always will be!” Trump said. For more on the supplies issue and the federal response, see Newsday's story by Scott Eidler and Laura Figueroa Hernandez.

Trump announced other steps Sunday, including a measure letting the hardest-hit states — New York, California, and Washington — call up the National Guard while the federal government covers the bill.

Trump said that large amounts of respirators, N95 masks, gowns, face shields and other items are on the way to those three states, along with medical stations with thousands of hospital beds. Vice President Mike Pence said the government hopes to have a backlog of coronavirus tests cleared by the middle of the week.

Direction lacking?

Counting on businesses to step up even when they're willing won’t be the answer without effective top-down government coordination, a New York Times report suggests.

Corporate executives say they face a bewildering number of requests from dozens of nations around the world, along with governors and mayors around the country, for needed supplies. The White House has not said who will set the priority list for deliveries. And it is not clear that any of it will arrive in time for the cities and the states that are hit the hardest, including New York, the report said.

COVID-19 thins out the Senate

With the Senate struggling to overcome partisan divisions and pass a nearly $2 trillion economic rescue package, one Republican senator called in coronavirus-positive Sunday, forcing two others into precautionary self-quarantine. There are now five senators in isolation.

Before getting results confirming he was carrying the virus, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky attended a Senate Republican lunch on Friday and visited the Senate's gym and pool earlier Sunday. Utah Republicans Mike Lee and Mitt Romney then went into quarantine because of close exposure to Paul, who is an eye surgeon. Already in self-quarantine based on other exposures were Sens. Rick Scott of Florida and Cory Gardner of Colorado. Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have come out of quarantine; neither tested positive.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) denounced Paul's decision to return to the Capitol — after he was tested but before he learned the results — as “absolutely irresponsible."

The rescue bill, drafted by Republicans led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, met resistance from Democrats who said it too tilted toward corporations without doing enough to help workers and health care providers. Negotiations continued late into the night.

Not 'Be Best' wishes

Trump didn't seem upset when, after asking reporters in the briefing room which senators were in self-quarantine, he was told about Romney.

"Romney's in isolation? Gee — that’s too bad," Trump said in a tone that sounded more like sarcasm than sympathy. 

The Utah senator, at age 73, would be in the more vulnerable category if he caught the virus. He was the lone Republican who voted in favor of Trump's impeachment. Asked if his remark was sarcasm, Trump said, "None whatsoever." Check out the video.

More on the latest

See the roundup by Newsday's reporting staff of the latest coronavirus developments. For all Newsday coverage on the pandemic, click here.

Janison: Shelter in insiders' place?

Having the luck or foresight to sell a lot of stock at the right time will not by itself be considered a sin against society, writes Newsday's Dan Janison.

But the intriguing question for several lawmakers is whether they, or those close to them, acted on information from closed-door coronavirus briefings — even as the official line consisted of high-level happy talk about the microbe having the impact of a seasonal flu outbreak.

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) disclosed, as required, that he and his wife on Feb. 13 sold shares of companies worth as much as $1.7 million. The Wall Street Journal calculated that the shares they sold had dropped by at least $250,000 as of last week.

Others whose portfolio trades showed uncanny timing include Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, both Georgia Republicans, and James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and the husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

Fauci at ease on tightrope

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the federal government's top medical expert in the fight against coronavirus, has built up the rarest of immunities: The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases repeatedly contradicts Trump, often from the same platform in White House briefings, and the president shows no sign of anger.

Last week, Fauci chimed in with cautions after Trump touted an antimalarial drug undergoing clinical trials against coronavirus as a potential "game-changer." Said Fauci, explaining why he needed to speak up: “It’s the hope that it will work, versus proving that it will work." He added, “So, I don’t see big differences here.” He yielded the lectern as Trump said, “I agree.”

Fauci told The Washington Post that when he was battling the AIDS crisis during President Ronald Reagan's administration, he heeded advice from a friend who had served in the Nixon administration: “When you go to the White House, always say, in the back of your mind, that ‘this may be the last time I’m going there because I might have to tell this president something he doesn’t like.’ ” He continued: “So the first thing I decided was, I would only speak the truth, based on the evidence I had and my purely clinical scientific judgment.”

That's his approach with Trump, too, Fauci said in an interview with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. "I say it the way it is," and if the president gets ticked off, he gets ticked off, Fauci said. "Thankfully, he is not. Interestingly.”

Fauci also said of the president: "He’s a smart guy. He’s not a dummy. So he doesn’t take it — certainly up to now — he doesn’t take it in a way that I’m confronting him in any way. He takes it in a good way.”

Counting the months

No one can predict with any confidence how long the coronavirus health crisis will last. “It is going to be four months, six months, nine months,” Cuomo said Sunday. “You look at China, once they really changed the trajectory — which we have not done yet — eight months. We’re in that range.”

But Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said the worst could be over for the economy sooner than that. “We need to get the money into the economy now — if we do that, we think we can stabilize the economy,” Mnuchin said on Fox News Sunday. “I think the president has every expectation that this is going to look a lot better four or eight weeks from now.”

What else is happening:

• Trump went off on a few tangents during the Sunday briefing, including the lawsuits and scrutiny he has faced since entering politics. "I think it’s very hard for rich people to run for office,” he said.
• Trump won't rule out accepting government assistance for his Trump Organization after it closed Mar-a-Lago and cut back operations elsewhere for hotel, golf and dining properties because of the pandemic. “Yeah, it’s hurting me, and it’s hurting Hilton and it’s hurting all of the great hotel chains all over the world,” Trump said at Saturday's briefing.
• The Justice Department has quietly asked Congress for the ability to ask chief judges of federal district courts to detain people indefinitely without trial during emergencies — part of a push for new powers that comes as coronavirus spreads throughout the country, Politico reported.
• The Trump administration is considering allowing a special enrollment period for people to sign up for health coverage under Obamacare because of the pandemic. Under Trump, the number of uninsured Americans has steadily ticked upward after years of decline. His administration has supported legal efforts to end Obamacare.
• Pence and his wife, Karen, have tested negative for coronavirus. They took the test because a member of the vice president's staff tested positive. Pence said the staffer did not have close contact with either him or Trump.
• Trump sent a personal letter to Kim Jong Un offering cooperation in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, according to North Korea's state media. Kim’s sister Kim Yo Jong, a senior official of the ruling party, praised Trump for sending the letter at a time when “big difficulties and challenges lie ahead in the way of developing ties” between the countries.
• Joe Biden won the endorsement of the 1.7 million-member American Federation of Teachers, the latest union group to support the former vice president in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.
• Ex-candidate Mike Bloomberg's campaign on Friday laid off hundreds of staffers who had been promised jobs to help Democrats through November even if he failed to win the nomination. The night before, staffers were alerted that two floors of their Manhattan headquarters were exposed to coronavirus, Politico reported. The New York staffers will lose health coverage after March 31.