Trump to host Cuomo at White House after conflict over supplies – as it happened

Live reporting on the coronavirus in the US continues on Tuesday’s blog:

That’s all for our live coverage today, thanks for following along. You can continue following our live global Covid-19 coverage here. Some key links and developments from the day in US politics and coronavirus:

• New York’s governor said the number of cases were now in a “descent”.
• Anti-lockdown protests emerged in Pennsylvania, California and elsewhere.
• Nearly 100 American transit workers have died from the coronavirus as basic measures to keep employees safe have lagged in cities across the United States, a Guardian US investigation has found.
• US oil prices dipped below zero for first time on record.
• Anthony Fauci has warned that if the US moves too quickly to end stay-at-home orders there could be another surge in Covid-19 cases.
• Maryland’s Republican governor directly obtained 500,000 tests from South Korea, prompting criticisms from Trump.
• Some states, including Georgia and South Carolina, announced plans to soon reopen businesses.
• The WHO’s director general said that no details about the coronavirus outbreak were hidden from the US by the organization.
• The Senate failed to reach a deal on the next coronavirus relief bill.
• Mike Bloomberg, the former New York mayor who had a short-lived campaign for president, spent more than $1bn on the race, according to filings out today.
• A number of former Bernie Sanders’ supporters in Congress have officially endorsed Joe Biden.

21 Apr 202020.31 EDT

David Smith

From the Guardian’s Washington DC bureau chief, a recap of today’s press confernece:

Donald Trump delivered another White House briefing that suggested while he does not have much of a pandemic strategy, he does have a political one.

The US president framed state governors’ demand for ventilators as merely the latest strategic attempt to tear him down, as if akin to the Russia investigation or his impeachment. “It was all ventilators, and the reason it was all ventilators – they said, ‘There’s no way he’ll be able catch this one’. And not only did we catch it, we are now the king of ventilators all over the world.

“We have thousands being made a week and they’re very high quality and that wasn’t playing well, so then they said, ‘Testing, testing, ah, we’ll get him on testing’. Well, testing is much easier than ventilators.”

In fact governors’ demands for ventilators were based on the White House’s own projections and, far from being new, their pleas for testing go back many weeks. Trump’s words are also unlikely to comfort the afflicted for whom a ventilator is a lifeline.

Later at Monday’s briefing, the president’s ability to show empathy was again in question.

Yamiche Alcindor of PBS News recalled one of her interviewees: “A man said his entire family got sick because they listened to you and didn’t stay home. Are you concerned that downplaying the virus got people sick?”

Trump’s stunning reply: “A lot of people love Trump, right. A lot of people love me, you see them all the time, right. I guess I’m here for a reason. To the best of my knowledge, I won, and I think we’re gonna win again. I think we’re gonna win in a landslide.”

The president went on to tout his travel restrictions on China, adding that “before March” he also banned travel from Europe (it was in fact announced on 11 March). The back and forth continued. Trump asserted: “I haven’t left the White House in months except for a brief moment to give a wonderful ship, the Comfort –”

Alcindor interjected, accurately: “You held a rally in March.”

Caught red-handed, the president said: “I don’t know. Did I hold a rally? I’m sorry, I hold a rally. Did I hold a rally?”

For a moment, the illusionist’s mask had slipped. And it was at a briefing where, improbably, Trump had earlier invoked George Washington by declaring: “I cannot tell a lie.

More on Trump’s attacks on Maryland’s governor, Larry Hogan, over his decision to purchase tests from South Korea due to a shortage in his state: While the president claimed earlier that Hogan didn’t “understand” the list of labs available to do testing, Hogan actually said he was “in contact with every one” on the list, and wasn’t able to use certain labs that were federally run, according to an ABC reporter:

Trump’s new press secretary did not dispute what ABC reported in a tweet response:

Mike Bloomberg, the former New York mayor who had a short-lived campaign for president, spent more than $1bn on the race, according to filings out today:

Bloomberg, one of the richest people in the world, dropped out after he lost race after race, ultimately only winning the tiny island territory of American Samoa in the Pacific.

The president has ended today’s briefing citing a range of different numbers for the potential deaths the US could have experienced, saying if the country hadn’t done lockdowns, there could have been 700,000 deaths, a million deaths, or maybe “millions”.

As of today, there have been more than 41,000 deaths recorded in the US. Experts fear that the country could experience surges and second waves if states reopen too soon and if there is not enough testing and contact tracing in place.

Defending his coronavirus record, Trump said: “I haven’t left the White House for months.”

In fact, he held a campaign rally in March. Asked about this, he responded, “Did I hold a rally? Sorry I held a rally.”

Asked why he didn’t take the virus seriously in the early phases of its spread in the US, the president repeated his claims about that his travel restrictions against China made a difference and saved many lives: “People should say I acted very early.”

In fact, the administration’s travel policy did not cut off all travel from China. Although non-US citizens were prohibited from entering the country if they had traveled to China within the previous two weeks, American citizens, permanent residents and their immediate family members were exempt. Similarly, Trump’s European travel restrictions exempted citizens, residents and their families. And initially, the restrictions didn’t apply to the UK and Ireland, as well as most Eastern European countries.

Epidemiologists have told the Guardian that these policies likely had little impact, as they were enacted after the virus was already spreading within the US.“Unfortunately, travel bans sound good,” noted Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist at Harvard’s TH Chan School of Public Health, after Trump announced European restrictions. “But we’re way past the point where simply restricting travel is a reasonable response.”

The few studies so far that have investigated the impact of travel restrictions have found that such policies may have at best delayed the spread of disease by a few days or weeks. A recent article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that travel restrictions and airport screenings in several countries “likely slowed the rate of exportation from mainland China to other countries, but are insufficient to contain the global spread of COVID-19. And in China, where officials shut down travel both in and out of Wuhan, the city where the Covid-19 outbreak began, the travel ban barely slowed the spread of diseases, according to a report published in Science.

But there is no evidence that travel restrictions ultimately stopped the spread of coronavirus, or significantly reduced the contagion’s death toll.

Read more:

Trump has claimed that the criticisms of testing are “mostly partisan” and “not bipartisan”, then he discussed the criticisms by Maryland’s governor, Larry Hogan, who is a Republican: “He didn’t really know [about federal laboratory testing capacity]. Mike [Pence] doesn’t like to get into this stuff, he’s less controversial than I am.”

The governor has said he had to get tests from South Korea due to a shortage.

A reporter asked Trump about the reports that large corporations are getting small business loans while actual small businesses are struggling to get the funds they desperately need. (Shake Shack, Ruth’s Chris and other chain restaurants have won loans while independent restaurants have spoken out about their difficulties accessing the support.)

Trump responded by joking that he didn’t win a loan: “I know one thing, I didn’t get any.” Regarding the loans to big businesses, he said:

We’ll look into. Some people will have to return it, if we think it’s inappropriate ... If somebody got something that they think is inappropriate we will get it back...”

Reporters have again asked about Maryland’s governor, Larry Hogan, ordering 500,000 tests from South Korea due to shortages. Brett Giroir, with the US Department of Health and Human Services, said there was “excess capacity” for testing and claimed he wasn’t sure why the governor made that deal. Vice president Mike Pence similarly said he has been in communication with Hogan, but also wasn’t sure why he did that.

Trump then attacked Hogan for securing tests, saying, “He could’ve saved a lot of money ... He needed to get a little knowledge, that would’ve been helpful.”

Regarding testing facilities in his state, Hogan just told CNN “more than half [of those listed by the federal government] in Maryland were federal facilities that we have desperately been trying to get help from, or military facilities”.