Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan excoriated President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic in a new Washington Post op-ed.
The Republican governor famously enlisted his wife, who was born in raised in South Korea, to ask that country’s president Moon Jae-in for help securing COVID-19 test kits in the early days of the pandemic, a month after Trump insisted anyone who wanted one could get tested.
“This should not have been necessary,” Hogan wrote. “I’d watched as the president downplayed the outbreak’s severity and as the White House failed to issue public warnings, draw up a 50-state strategy, or dispatch medical gear or lifesaving ventilators from the national stockpile to American hospitals.”
“Eventually, it was clear that waiting around for the president to run the nation’s response was hopeless,” he added. “If we delayed any longer, we’d be condemning more of our citizens to suffering and death. So every governor went their own way, which is how the United States ended up with such a patchwork response. I did the best I could for Maryland. Here’s what we saw and heard from Washington along the way.”