Trump Says He's Doing a Hell of a Job Getting Medical Supplies. Reality Says Otherwise.

After weeks of resisting pleas from governors and healthcare workers to force private companies to ramp up production of medical supplies to help combat the coronavirus crisis, President Donald Trump on Friday afternoon announced that he had changed his mind.

In a public announcement the White House said that President Trump had written a memo to the Department of Health and Human Services directing secretary Alex Azar to “use any and all authority available under the Defense Production Act to require General Motors to accept, perform, and prioritize Federal contracts for ventilators.”

The news came after a confusing morning in the White House where officials were caught off guard by Trump’s mysterious tweets where he demanded General Motors and Ford to make ventilators and hinted that he may use the Defense Production Act (DPA) to enforce his requests.

Three senior Trump administration officials who have worked on these matters each independently told The Daily Beast that they were befuddled by the Friday tweets, and did not know what the president’s posts actually meant. Each official said that they were, at the time, still trying to get clarity from Trump or other senior officials on what, if anything, new had just been decreed.

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-says-doing-hell-job-181226494.html