In the last week, Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois has become more open and full-throated than some of his counterparts in criticizing President Donald Trump for his failure to help them battle the coronavirus. Not surprisingly, Trump has punched back, calling Pritzker a “complainer” and passing the buck back to the states, treating them like dubious in-laws looking for a cut of the family fortune.

On this week’s episode of Inside the Hive with Nick Bilton, Pritzker punched back, highlighting the consequences of Trump’s lack of action. “The failures of the White House, of the president, have visited greater illness and greater number of deaths across the country,” he said.

“They were just caught completely unprepared,” he added. “When there was any realization within his administration that this was a massive potential crisis—the president was publicly downplaying it, publicly saying that this is a hoax, or that this is just like the flu, it’ll pass right on by, no problem—when finally he was faced with the death toll and the case numbers rising rapidly, I think you saw there was one press conference finally where he came out and was reading from a script.”

As of this week, there have been 16,424 cases of coronavirus identified in Illinois and over 500 deaths—and epidemiological modeling predicts cases will peak sometime in the next two weeks.

In regular calls with fellow governors, Pritzker has heard the same thing, regardless of political affiliation: “Republicans and Democrats all acknowledge that the federal government has fallen down on the job.”

Governor Pritzker has joined other Democratic leaders, including presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, in asking Trump to take charge of coordinating the flow of medical supplies to states through the Defense Production Act, which allows the government to take control of private factories and produce and distribute supplies in an emergency. In a PBS interview on Monday, Pritzker confirmed that the federal government was shipping in supplies from China and handing them over to private companies to sell to the state that bid the highest.

“I mean, for me to go out and compete against California, New York, and countries outside of the United States to get the lifesaving equipment that we need—and, oh, by the way, I’m also competing against FEMA and the federal government—it’s outrageous,” Pritzker told me. “It’s outrageous.”

Pritzker said he spoke with Trump directly two weeks ago and was promised a number of supplies. A “fraction” of what was promised was delivered, he said, and in one case the order was completely botched. “They promised us 300,000 N95 masks, and we got 300,000 surgical masks,” he said. “They did promise us 300 ventilators, which we got. They were operational, unlike the ones that went to California, but we had to go check every one of them because we understood that the ones that went to California were broken.

“We’ve had to just finally say, ‘Well then, we’re not going to rely upon any promises that are made, and we’re just going to act as if we’re an independent nation here,’ which isn’t the way this ought to work.”

The lack of coordination—Trump’s strategy of letting states duke it out on their own—meant that Illinois, which was the third state in the nation to shut down businesses and ask people to follow social distancing guidelines, was left exposed to neighboring states Iowa and Missouri, both led by Republican governors who were significantly behind in shutting down because they were following Trump’s messaging.

Pritzker endorsed Biden’s candidacy in mid-March, but he hasn’t thought through the ramifications of Trump’s failures on the November election.

“I can’t help but think that the people will understand that leadership matters in the White House and that will make a difference in November,” he said. “That’s my view and I think that the failures are so evident to me, but I’m sometimes bewildered that there are people out there that want to be critical of governors who are leading and that want to parrot things that the White House says, even though they’re inaccurate. I’m always amazed at the number of people who take that position.”

As for Trump’s attacks calling him a “complainer,” Pritzker said, “I think now he’s just looking for people to blame.… Have you ever heard the president take responsibility for any mistake?”

I asked Pritzker what he would tell Donald Trump if he had him on the phone today.

“Well I would implore Donald Trump to, first of all, invoke the Defense Production Act in a way that will organize the market so that we can get the goods that we need,” he said. “A second thing that I would implore him to do is to provide leadership to all of the states. He is the president of the United States.”

Listen to the full interview on Inside the Hive with Nick Bilton.

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