Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called on President Donald Trump to “immediately implement the Defense Production Act (DPA)” to help combat the coronavirus pandemic, but there may be a slight problem with that — the president last week already utilized the DPA when he ordered General Motors to construct ventilators.
Co-host Mika Brzezinski asked Pelosi, “If you could speak to [Trump] directly, what do you wish he would be doing now that he is not doing?”
“[T]to the president, I would join those, whether it’s the governors, the mayors, people across the country who are saying, ‘We need the equipment, the personal protective equipment, for the workers, the ventilators and other equipment for the patients,'” Pelosi replied. “We need proper testing, testing, testing. So I would say to the president, immediately, implement the Defense Production Act insisting that businesses in our country turn to producing the equipment that we need.”
She added, “The American people, their representatives, officialdom, all the rest, are united in that recognition of that need. It will save lives.”
Brzezinski noted Trump already said he is implementing the DPA, but Pelosi said it has been done “discreetly”
“He has discreetly just in a discreet way done something about ventilators, but there’s an overall appeal for him to do much, much more. And this is nothing that can be handled piecemeal. It has to be across the board,” she declared.
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