Trump, Pritzker swap shots
Illinois coronavirus infections climb past 11,000 in 70 counties as death toll hits 274
President Trump speaks at the daily White House briefing on April Fools’ Day. (White House/Joyce Boghosian)
By Ted Cox
President Trump called out Gov. Pritzker by name for “complaining” Sunday as Trump came under increasing criticism for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
Pritzker has not been sparing in his criticism of the president. On Thursday, he spoke of Trump’s handling of the crisis by saying, “This will go down in history as a profound failure of our national government.” And on Friday he attacked Trump’s son-in-law, White House aide Jared Kushner, for suggesting openly that the Strategic National Stockpile of critical medical supplies was “our” stockpile and states had no right to it. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot joined in that barrage.
At Sunday’s daily White House briefing on the COVID-19 crisis, Trump said, “There is a governor, I hear him complaining all the time, Pritzker. … He has not performed well.”
Gov. Pritzker entered Sunday’s coronavirus briefing wearing a mask in a clear message to Illinoisans that they should wear masks in public as well. (Facebook)
Trump then attempted to take credit for the conversion of Chicago’s McCormick Place convention center into what’s being termed an “alternate-care facility” with 3,000 hospital beds to treat COVID-19 patients, although he muddled the count and said it would have 2,500 beds. Lightfoot and Chicago Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady first discussed the possibility of using McCormick Place for overflow COVID-19 patients last month, and Pritzker moved on it before the end of March. He and Lightfoot were effusive in their praise for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Illinois National Guard on Friday in completing the conversion for the first 500 beds in just five days.
All this threatened to overshadow how over the weekend confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Illinois rose to 11,256 in what is now 70 of the state’s 102 counties. Deaths attributed to COVID-19 rose to 274. That was perhaps the point, from Trump’s perspective, as nationally cases rose to 337,000 by Monday morning, and deaths approached 10,000. Globally, cases topped 1.2 million, as deaths topped 70,000.
Pritzker has not been alone by any means in criticizing the Trump administration for its weak response to the crisis, from Trump calling it a “hoax” early in the pandemic and insisting it would disappear as weather warmed, to the federal failure in delivering COVID-19 tests to states, to the president’s refusal to use the Defense Production Act to unify the federal response and streamline the process of getting critical supplies where they’re needed.
Last Thursday, Kushner said: “The notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile. It’s not supposed to be state stockpiles that they then use.”
On Sunday, Pritzker charged that Trump’s failure to lead has resulted in what he’s previously called a “piecemeal” approach to states discouraging the spread of the disease through stay-at-home declarations. “I really believe that governors that haven’t taken the kind of action that we did, or took it much later than we did, are, unfortunately, they have been listening to President Trump and his advice,” Pritzker said. “And his advice has been, first it was this is a hoax. Then it was this is just like the flu. This will go away in a few days. I think many of them were listening to all of that while the president was not taking this very seriously.”
Downstate has seen outbreaks in Rock Island County and the Quad Cities and in the Metro East area across from St. Louis, both just across the Mississippi River from Iowa and Missouri, respectively, states under Republican governors. Iowa has yet to impose a state-at-home order, and Missouri’s statewide order only took effect just after midnight Monday.
The Associated Press reported Sunday that Trump was alerted to the dangers of the pandemic in January, and his administration “squandered nearly two months that could have been used to bolster the federal stockpile of critically needed medical supplies and equipment.” The Chicago Tribune, a resolutely Republican newspaper, ran that story in its Monday print edition under a banner headline across the front page stating: “Months wasted in pandemic prep.”