Trump: I Don’t Think Governors ‘Need’ the Medical Equipment They’re Begging For

“I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators. You know, you go to major hospitals, sometimes they have two ventilators.”

Trump said one thing the governors (and all of us) have to agree with: “This has to be managed by local government and by the governors.” That’s 100% correct as worded. Note that the phrase is not “should be” but “has to be.”

17 thoughts on “Trump: I Don’t Think Governors ‘Need’ the Medical Equipment They’re Begging For

  1. I think it’s hard to know if Trump is stupid or not. My father is like Trump in a number of ways: he’s a bullying personality with a massive misplaced sense of his own self importance. It’s important to remember that ‘memory is a strange thing.’ It’s a myth that the brain in like a tape recorder. In fact, memories are being remade in the brain as soon as after an event occurs.

    Having spoken to other people about my father, what I’m told is people like this have something of a ‘hero complex’ in that they need to be the hero of their own narrative. Trump is definitely like that (Joe Biden also seems to have this at a much lower level, like his false memory of having been arrested in South Africa.) So, when Trump is revising history to recount events, forgetting what he said just the day previously, what-have-you, it’s very possible he’s not intentionally lying, but just recounting the way he remembers things. I think it’s possible he’s not stupid, but is genuinely deranged.

    1. No, he’s stupid…but was lucky for a long time. It looks like that lucky streak has terminated.

  2. I am sure that as each mayor and governor estimate the number of ventilators they might need and therefore the number to ask the federal government for they are inflating their requests at least somewhat because 1. They know they will never get as many as they ask for, so better to ask for more than you need and 2. if the need is greater than they estimate, they want to be able to say they requested enough but there weren’t enough to go around and/or blame Trump. Governor Cuomo was saying the other day that because NY is at the forefront, the Feds should give NY 30,000 ventilators now and that he will make sure we send them where needed as soon as we don’t need them anymore. He kind of left out the part where it could be well into the summer before we don’t need them anymore.

    1. True. But if you’re the feds, don’t you send the ventilator where it will save someone’s life today, then work like hell to get more as fast as you can?

      1. I agree, that is exactly what the federal government should be doing. My point was that the federal government can’t simply ship out it’s stores of ventilators to states on a first come first serve basis, like toilet paper at a Costco. What we are facing is heath care rationing at its most necessary. There have been news reports here in NYC about at least one hospital retrofitting ventilators so that they can be used by 2 patients at the same time. That sounds horrifying. But if we reach a point where we have more patients that will die without a ventilator than we have ventilators it could literally be life saving.

        The one and only silver lining of my mother having died last year is my family not living in constant fear of her contracting Covid 19. Between April and September of last year, my mother found herself moving back and forth between the ICU, regular hospital rooms, and a rehab hospital with only very brief stops at home. She spent time intubated on a ventilator, but also time receiving positive pressure ventilation from a BIPAP machine. My mother also suffered from sleep apnea and used a BIPAP machine at home while she slept. Her machine was much smaller than the one they had her on in the hospital and probably not designed for 24/7 use. But I emailed Mt. Sinai Hospital earlier this week and offered to donate her machine to them if they could use it. We may very well reach a point where re-purposed home CPAP and BIPAP machines can save hospital ventilators for the very sickest patients.

        1. You are right, Michael McChesney. Trump blurts out stuff based on total ignorance, as well as deliberate lies, and some of the former is true once in a great while. It is hard to give him credit, since he scarcely deserves it, but we have to recognize when it is the case.

          1. I remember back in 2005 or 2006 I was teaching social studies in the Bronx. I had heard that according to certain polls large numbers of people believed that the government and George W. Bush had been behind 9/11. I asked one of my classes if they believe that and more than 1/3 raised their hands. So I asked “Why do you believe that?” One girl just yelled out “Because I hate him!” Then she laughed and said “I guess that’s not a good reason.” I said, “No it’s not, but it IS an honest one.”

            I used to think that Trump’s embracing of the “birther” conspiracy was completely cynical. When I first heard the claim Obama had been born in Africa it had taken me less than 5 minutes to find fairly definitive proof he had been born in Hawaii, namely birth announcements in 2 Honolulu newspapers. I figured anyone with half a brain and any intellectual curiosity whatsoever couldn’t actually believe that nonsense. It seems to me that Trump is sorely lacking in intellectual curiosity. But he has an almost savant like understanding of influencing public opinion. Combine that with low morals and a lack of shame and you can’t trust what he says. But we can’t just reject what he says out of hand either. Fortunately, there are some people around him I think we CAN trust, such as Dr. Fauci. Maybe he should run for president.

          2. Since Trump is both a cynical liar and as dumb as a rock, it’s always difficult to determine whether his foolish statements stem from his stupidity or his dishonesty. I have to admit that I am frequently puzzled by that. In the case of the Trump/Obama birther controversy, I remember that Trump sent detectives to Hawaii to look for dirt, so maybe he was actually dumb enough to believe it. Or maybe those detectives never even existed at all. Once again, who can tell with Trump?

            In another sense, though, the birther controversy demonstrated his unique genius. There was a very large bloc of disaffected white racists out there who were upset that “the new sheriff’s a n _______.” The birther issue – which was Trump’s only issue at the time – lassoed that bloc securely (and it seems permanently) into his camp. He was also smart enough to realize that the white racist bloc was sizable enough to launch a national political career. In that respect, he knew more than I did.

          3. I think Trump’s “genius”, such as it is, is being the right person atthe right time to tap into a perfect storm of:

            *racism
            *desire of the uneducated and willfully stupid to show up the “brains” regardless of the facts/science
            *right-wing evangelism (which overlaps with the top two to a great extent)
            *genuine economic fears (which comprise a much smaller percentage of Trump supporters than the apologists claim)

          1. Personally I think Trump knows exactly what he’s doing. I don’t think he’s stupid at all. He drowns out facts he doesn’t like with smoke and mirrors and he trolls dissenters hard. He’s a bully, a narcissist, and an asshole but that doesn’t make him dumb. He’s extremely talented at manipulation and is a world class showman.

          2. I’m the one who went to school with him. He’s basically dumb as a rock.

            What a choice we have for president. That battle of the C students.

          3. I also don’t think “intellectual” and intelligent are the same thing. There are plenty of brilliant people who didn’t succeed at, have the opportunity for, or care about academic disciplines or pursuits. And there are plenty of total morons with PHDs.

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