IL Gov Calls Out Trump Administration for Failing to Follow Through on Testing Assistance: ‘I’ve Given Up on Any Promises Made’
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker declared on CNN that he has effectively abandoned any hope in President Donald Trump our his administration following through on previous bold promises about widespread federal assistance for coronavirus testing.
Speaking with Erin Burnett, Pritzker elaborated on the president’s comments just hours earlier at the White House daily coronavirus briefing, where the president again distanced the federal government from any further role in identifying the spread of the virus around the country. A little more than a month ago, Trump famously promised that “anybody who wants a test can get a test” during a widely-panned visit to the CDC. But as of Tuesday, roughly one percent of the country had been tested for the Covid-19 virus and many locations were still complaining about test kit shortages.
“So the president said a few moments ago in that briefing, governor,” Burnett noted, “he said when the testing question came up that the governors are supposed to do the testing. It’s not up to to the federal government. Basically any issues any problems are your fault. Your response?”
“Well, that wasn’t his tune earlier. In fact, let me go all the way back to when he said it was a hoax and all of us were trying to deal with it as individual governors,” Pritzker noted, not holding back. “Illinois was the second state in the United States, the same day as California, to put our stay-at-home order in place. It’s having the effect of leveling out the cases here. But we’re the ones who had to spin up testing. I asked over and over again for testing from the federal government. They kept saying they would deliver millions of tests across the country. They haven’t done that.”
“We have gotten very little help from the federal government. It’s fine,” a clearly frustrated Pritzker added. “I’ve given up on any promises that have been made. I hope something will get delivered from the federal government, but I don’t expect it anymore.”
“The president at this point is near irrelevant when it comes to this question of testing any way. And they’ve done very little for us as a state. So we’re doing the work,” Pritzker said, before pointing out that, at times, the federal government has acted as an obstacle in his attempts to obtain the necessary personal protective equipment for his state to deal with the outbreak.
“We’ve ordered millions and millions of dollars of PPE and items of PPE that we’re getting delivered from all over the world,” Pritzker said. “We had to compete with everybody including with Donald Trump for that PPE. But we’re getting it, and we’re doing what we need to do, despite him.”
Watch the video above, via CNN.
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