“Thank you for your Democrat public relations letter and incorrect sound bites, which are wrong in every way,” Trump said in the letter.
Schumer also accused Trump of having dismissed the Defense Production Act (DPA) “as not being needed,” and criticized Trump’s appointment of White House aide Peter Navarro as the National DPA Policy Coordinator as “woefully unqualified” for solving the PPE and ventilator shortages.
“1. As you are aware, Vice President Pence is in charge of the Task Force. By almost all accounts, he has done a spectacular job.
“2. The Defense Production Act (DPA) has been consistently used by my team and me for the purchase of billions of dollars’ worth of equipment, medical supplies. ventilators, and other related items. It has been powerful leverage, so powerful that companies generally do whatever we are asking, without even a formal notice. They know something is coming, and that’s all they need to know.”
The third point in Trump’s letter noted that Rear Admiral John Polowczyk is in charge of coordinating the United States’ COVID-19 supply chain task force at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“If you remember, my team gave you this information, but for public relations purposes, you choose to ignore it,” Trump wrote.
Finally, Trump pointed out that the federal government has provided New York state “many things, including hospitals, medical centers, medical supplies, record numbers of ventilators, and more.”
“You should have had New York much better prepared than you did, as Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx said yesterday, New York was very late in its fight against the virus,” Trump wrote. “As you are aware, the federal government is merely a back-up for state governments. Unfortunately, your state needed far more of a back-up than most others.”
“Fortunately, we have been working with your state and city governments, Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill DeBlasio, to get the job done. You have been missing in action, except when it comes to the ‘press,’” Trump wrote, urging Schumer to start cooperating with Cuomo “for the good of all New Yorkers.”
“It wouldn’t matter if you got 10 times what was needed, it would never be good enough. Unlike other states, New York unfortunately got off to a late start. You should have pushed harder. Stop complaining and find out where all of these supplies are going. Cuomo working hard!” Trump wrote.
“To the President: Americans are dying and losing jobs. Businesses are teetering. Stop the pettiness. Be a leader. Do your job,” read Schumer’s message.
“You know, I’d say to the president: just stop the pettiness—people are dying—and so, President Trump, we need leadership. We need to get the job done. Stop the pettiness. Let’s get it done. Let’s roll up our sleeves,” Schumer said.
The death toll from the CCP virus jumped to 2,370 in New York state on Thursday. There are more than 92,300 cases in the state, more than 13,000 patients with the virus are hospitalized, and about 3,000 are in intensive care units, Cuomo said on Thursday at a press briefing.
The federal government has also sent out some 7,640 ventilators, Polowczyk said, of which 4,400 are going to New York, 500 to Washington state, 850 to New Jersey, 400 to Michigan, and 150 to Louisiana.
He also said that six planes carrying medical supplies from overseas have landed in the United States so far, and 28 more are expected in the coming weeks.
Vice President Mike Pence also told reporters that “pallets are being loaded right now to send 200,000 N95 [respirator] masks to New York City to the public health hospitals.”
“I have family in New York,“ Polowczyk said. ”My sister’s a nurse practitioner in Westchester hospital and my niece is a nurse in a Long Island hospital, and I have other health care professionals in the family. So I have skin in this game, and the president asked me to get more [respirators] to health care workers and we’re going to get more to health care workers.”
