President Trump today claimed that an inspector general report finding “severe” shortages of supplies at hospitals to fight the novel coronavirus is “just wrong.”
Trump did not provide evidence for why the conclusions of the 34-page report are wrong.
He implied that he is mistrustful of inspectors general more broadly.
He recently fired the inspector general of the intelligence community, which has drawn outrage from non-partisan government watchdogs.
“Did I hear the word inspector general?” Trump said in response to the reporter’s question about the findings.
“It’s just wrong,” Trump said of the report.
The inspector general report, released earlier today, was based on a survey of 323 randomly selected hospitals across the country.
It found “severe” shortages of tests and wait times as long as seven days for hospitals.
It also found “widespread” shortfalls of protective equipment such as masks for health workers, something that doctors and nurses have also noted for weeks.
“The level of anxiety among staff is like nothing I’ve ever seen,” one hospital administrator said in the report.
The report “accurately captures the crisis that hospitals and health systems, physicians and nurses on the front lines face of not having enough personal protective equipment (PPE), medical supplies and equipment in their fight against COVID-19,” the AHA said.
“Where did he come from, the inspector general?” Trump said, adding, “What’s his name?”
The office is currently led by Christi Grimm, the principal deputy inspector general.
Grimm joined the inspector general’s office in 1999.
This is the pattern Trump has adopted during the coronavirus emergency.
He announced Friday that he would be firing Michael Atkinson, the inspector general for the intelligence community.
Trump said in a required letter to Congress that he no longer had “the fullest confidence” in Atkinson.
He did not disguise the fact that what caused him to lose that confidence was Atkinson following the law and allowing the truth to come out about Trump’s lawless attempt to pressure a foreign power to announce politically helpful investigations.
Atkinson will be fired 30 days after the letter went to Congress, the soonest he can be under law, but Trump undercut even that law by putting Atkinson on immediate administrative leave.
Michael Horowitz, the respected inspector general of the Department of Justice and chairman of a council that coordinates inspectors general, went out on a limb to vouch for Atkinson, praising his integrity and his handling of the Ukraine whistle-blower complaint.
Trump compounded the Atkinson announcement on Friday night with his intention to nominate White House lawyer Brian Miller to be special inspector general for pandemic recovery, a key position for oversight of the just-passed $2 trillion coronavirus relief package, which is ripe for fraud and corruption without aggressive review.
The position demands ironclad independence, particularly with the risk that Trump’s company, relatives, customers and donors could seek to benefit from the stimulus package.
Miller, who served for nearly 10 years as inspector general at the General Services Administration, but more recently played a role in the White House’s response to the impeachment inquiry, is precisely the wrong person to ensure independence.
Friday night’s actions came at the end of a week of scary departures from democratic practices.
Reporting indicates that more and more power has gone to the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, whose coronavirus “shadow task force” of government allies and private sector connections may run afoul of federal law.
Kushner is meanwhile also reportedly playing a significant role in the Trump re-election campaign from the White House, which may also violate federal law.
Indeed, earlier Friday, the government changed its description on a federal website of the strategic national stockpile to correspond to Kushner’s description of it as being for the benefit of the federal government, not the states.
Also last week, the Navy fired a captain who blew the whistle on the scope of a Covid-19 outbreak on his ship, another example of apparent payback for truthtelling, and the president reportedly wants to have his own signature on stimulus checks to Americans, which may also run afoul of law.
All of these autocratic steps come on top of Trump’s February purges of officials who testified in the impeachment trial and attempts to meddle in the sentencing of friends and allies convicted of crimes.