WATCH: Trump Cites Conspiracy Blogger Gateway Pundit to Attack Andrew Cuomo Over Coronavirus and Ventilators
President Donald Trump quoted Gateway Pundit conspiracy blogger Jim Hoft during a Fox News town hall to falsely claim that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo refused to purchase 16,000 ventilators in 2015, when no such purchase was considered or offered.
During a very friendly town hall event on Fox News, Trump responded to Cuomo’s recent complaint about the paltry number of ventilators being sent to the state.
“I watched Governor Cuomo and he was very nice, we’re building him hospitals, we’re building him medical centers and he was complaining about, we’re doing probably more, definitely more for him then anybody else, and he was talking about the ventilators,” Trump told Fox anchor Bill Hemmer.
Earlier in the day, Cuomo ripped the federal response, exclaiming “You want a pat on the back for sending 400 ventilators!? What are we going to do with 400 ventilators when we need 30,000 ventilators!?”
“But he should have ordered the ventilators, and he had a choice, he had a chance because right here,” Trump continued, taking out some papers to had to Hemmer, “I just got this out, that he refused to order 15,000 ventilators, I’ll show this to Bill, take a look at that Bill. What does that say?”
“Is this social distancing here?” Hemmer joked, refusing the offer.
“It says ‘New York Governor Cuomo rejected buying recommended $16,000 ventilators in 2015 for the pandemic,’ for a pandemic, established death panels, and lotteries instead,” Trump said. “So he had a chance to buy, in 2015, 16,000 ventilators at a very low price and he turned it down, I’m not blaming him or anything else but he shouldn’t be talking about us. He’s supposed to be buying his own ventilators.”
Trump was quoting a Gateway Pundit blog post that falsely accuses Cuomo of turning down the purchase of ventilators in 2016, and which is based on an opinion column penned by the co-inventor of the original “death panel” lie, Betsy McCaughey.
But no such purchase was actually considered or offered, McCaughey simply hypothesizes that Cuomo could have stockpiled ventilators instead of, or as well as, having a health task force establish guidelines for allocating ventilator use during a pandemic.
In fact, that task force even explained why stockpiling ventilators wasn’t an option, writing “Even if New York State purchases additional ventilators, the demand would quickly outpace supply in a severe pandemic. No matter how many ventilators are available, in a severe pandemic there will be shortages because so many people will be sick at the same time. In addition, even with enough ventilators, a sufficient number of trained staff may not be available to operate them, particularly because health care workers will be among the ill.”
Watch the clip above via Fox News.
