WA Gov. Inslee: ‘Ludicrous’ Trump Doesn’t Have National Effort on Coronavirus

Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Gov. Jay Inslee (D-WA) said it is “ludicrous” President Donald Trump is not mounting a “national effort” to combat the coronavirus pandemic.

Inslee said, “We’ve had good communications with the vice president, with the CDC. Those have been good. But this is ludicrous that we do not have a national effort in this. To say we’re a backup, I mean, the surgeon general alluded to Pearl Harbor. Can you imagine if Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, ‘I’ll be right behind you, Connecticut? Good luck building those battleships’? Look, we need a national mobilization of the manufacturing base of the United States, as we started on December 8, 1941.”

“We need to nationally mobilize, using the Defense Production Act so that we can get these companies, instead of making cup holders, to start making visors,” he continued. “Start making test kits. We don’t have enough test kits by far in my state or anywhere in the United States. So we, governors, Republicans and Democrats, have been urging the president to do what he should, which is if he wants to be a wartime president, be a wartime president. Show some leadership. Mobilize the industrial base of the United States. That’s what we need.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN