NEW YORK GOV. ANDREW Cuomo and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer are calling for congressional investigations into the Trump administration’s “politicization of [the] pandemic response.”
The Democratic governors singled out President Donald Trump, saying in a joint statement on Thursday that the “unprecedented and unacceptable scale of this tragedy is the direct result of President Trump and the federal government’s deceit, political self-dealing and incompetence.”
“It is an inarguable fact that the United States has had the worst response to the COVID-19 virus of any nation in the world,” the statement read.
According to Johns Hopkins University, the U.S. has the highest number of reported coronavirus cases globally, with more than 6.94 million. The U.S. also has the highest reported death toll, at more than 202,240.
Both Cuomo and Whitmer have traded sharp jabs with Trump over the handling of the pandemic, with the governors accusing the president of putting his reelection ahead of public health.
The governors charge that the president put the health and safety of Americans in the hands of politicians “whose first priority was securing reelection of their benefactor,” rather than turn to public health experts for advice and guidance, leading to “predictably tragic results.”
The statement went on to comment on news that the White House blocked a plan to send free masks to American households in April, calling the move “heartbreaking.” Additionally, the governors slammed some of the health guidelines published by the federal government, including those related to airborne transmission of COVID-19 and others saying that people without symptoms should not get tested.
“It’s increasingly clear that the President and his advisers are trying to undermine the credibility of experts whose facts run counter to the administration’s political agenda,” the governors said.
“Congress must immediately conduct an oversight investigation into the Trump administration’s response to this pandemic. … The question of, ‘What did they know and when did they know it?’ cannot be left to the history books to answer,” the statement continued. “Our future health and economic security depend on holding the Trump administration accountable today.”
