The truth about Trump from one Republican governor
Blunt talk is a welcome breath of fresh bipartisan air in a country now divided by its reaction to COVID-19.
Ever since the coronavirus hit America, Governor Larry Hogan of Maryland has been doing something rare and wonderful for a Republican: speaking truth about President Trump.
It happened again on Sunday, when CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Hogan about the president’s assertion that America’s coronavirus testing capacity is “fully sufficient” to begin opening up the country.
“I think this is probably the number one problem in America, and has been from the beginning of the crisis, the lack of testing," replied Hogan. The Trump administration, he added, is trying to ramp up its response — “but to try to push this off, to say that the governors have plenty of testing and they should just get to work on testing, somehow we aren’t doing our job, is just absolutely false.” Boom.
Democratic governors like Andrew Cuomo of New York and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan get lots of love when they spar with Trump. But blunt talk from Hogan, the head of the National Governors Association, is a welcome breath of fresh, bipartisan air in a country now divided by its reaction to COVID-19. No one will ever write odes to the ordinary blazer stretched around his frame, and his delivery is not high theater. But his straight talk is more valuable than a Dow Jones surge. It’s the only antidote that matters against Trump’s daily dose of poisonous mendacity. On Monday, Trump tweeted again that states, not the federal government, should be in charge of testing.
Hogan also responded honestly to Tapper’s question about protesters — including those in Maryland — who, with encouragement from Trump, are calling on their governors to open up their states for business, noting that the president’s own guidelines call for 14 days of confirmed cases of COVID-19 to decline before that should happen. Hogan said he understood the frustration, but "to encourage people to go protest your own plan . . . it just doesn’t make any sense. We’re sending completely conflicting messages out to the governors and to the people, as if we should ignore federal policy and federal recommendations.”
On testing, Hogan got back-up from Republican Governor Mike DeWine of Ohio, who told NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday that his state “really needs help” from the federal government. Meanwhile, during a Sunday appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation, Republican Governor Charlie Baker also talked about the financial help Massachusetts needs from “the feds.” But Hogan has been calling for that, plus more test kits and protective gear, since the country and his state first started battling the coronavirus. Earlier this month, he told The New York Times, ”I knew that taking quick decisive action was better than hesitating. I think the public was not where I was on the knowledge. There were folks saying this is no big deal, it’s not as bad as the flu, it’s going to disappear. And I was saying, ‘No, it’s worse.’”
Hogan told Tapper he was first alerted to the coronavirus on Feb. 9, during the annual winter meeting of the National Governors Association, when governors were briefed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, who heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Hogan declared a state of emergency on March 5 and changed a stay-at-home advisory to an order on March 30.
Like Baker, Hogan governs a blue state; Maryland Democrats outnumber Republicans by two to one. However, he still faces resistance from protesters who want him to reopen parts of the state.
At one of his press briefings, Trump said that “some of the governors have gotten carried away” with their lockdown orders. Through Twitter, Trump has encouraged protesters in Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia to “liberate” their states. Asked about that on CNN, Hogan said, “Look, we’re doing everything we possibly can to reopen in a safe manner. But I don’t think it’s helpful to encourage demonstrations and encourage people to go against the president’s own policy.”
That simple truth should be shouted from every state house in America, no matter what political party a governor belongs to.
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