Maryland Gov. Hogan: Trump’s COVID-19 Response Was ‘Hopeless’

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) broke with his party this week by authoring an op-ed in which the Republican governor criticized President Donald Trump’s coronavirus response.

In the editorial in The Washington Post, Hogan specifically drew attention to the Trump administration’s handling of the testing situation. Addressing the early days of the crisis, before the coronavirus ravaged the United States, Hogan wrote, “While other countries were racing ahead with well-coordinated testing regimes, the Trump administration bungled the effort.”

Hogan added, “Instead of listening to his own public health experts, the president was talking and tweeting like a man more concerned about boosting the stock market or his reelection plans.”

The Maryland governor also detailed how his wife, who is South Korean, helped secure the purchase of half-million tests from her birthplace after Trump declared that governors were responsible for testing in their states.

“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; 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.”

Hogan wrote, “It was hopeless, waiting around for . Governors were being told that we were on our own. It was sink or swim.”

He also said that he tried to get testing help from the National Institute of Health (NIH), which is run by the federal government but instead, the NIH asked for his help, saying that they barely had enough tests for their staff.

Hogan also wrote that he had a call with Vice President Mike Pence after he had gotten half-million tests for his state.

After the Maryland governor secured the deal with South Korea, Trump criticized him from the White House, claiming that hundreds of labs are ready to help with testing, saying, “The governor from Maryland didn’t really understand the list, he didn’t really understand too much about what was going on.”

This is not the first time that governor Hogan has broken from his party. He has criticized Trump before, though rarely in such blunt terms. Following the George Floyd protests, for example, Hogan said that Trump’s tweets “are not helpful.”