Rarely has the schism between President Trump and his own public health advisers over the coronavirus pandemic been put on display quite so starkly. Even as he announced a new federal recommendation on Friday that Americans wear masks when out in public, he immediately disavowed it: “I am choosing not to do it.”
The striking dichotomy underscored how often Mr. Trump has been at odds with the medical experts seeking to guide his handling of the outbreak as well as some of the governors fighting it on the front lines, despite his move to extend social distancing guidelines through April 30 and his acknowledgment that the death toll could be staggering.
While the health specialists and some governors press for a more aggressive, uniform national approach to the virus, the president has resisted expanding limits on daily life and sought to shift blame to the states for being unprepared to deal with the coronavirus. While they sound the alarm and call for more federal action, Mr. Trump has deflected responsibility and left it to others to take a more aggressive stance.
Some of the president’s health advisers in recent days have argued that restrictions on social interaction and economic activity that have shut down much of the nation need to be expanded to all 50 states and that more Americans need to adopt them. Mr. Trump, by contrast, has characterized the crisis as generally limited to hot spots like New York, California and Michigan and has expressed no support for a nationwide lockdown. “I would leave it to the governors,” he said on Friday.
As hospitals cope with shortages of medical equipment, the administration on Friday also rewrote the federal government’s stated mission for its stockpile of supplies to make clear that it sees itself as playing a secondary role to the states. Where the federal government once said the stockpile “ensures that the right medicines and supplies get to those who need the most,” the revised version said the federal stockpile’s role was merely to “supplement state and local supplies.”
The tension over the scale of the federal response comes as the president defends his administration’s reaction to the pandemic that has now infected more than 270,000 people in the United States and has killed more than 7,000. New polls showed that public support for Mr. Trump’s handling of the crisis has begun to slip, a worrisome development for a president seeking re-election in the fall.
Mr. Trump’s decision to take a back seat to the states by leaving it to them to decide whether to shut down public life and insisting they take the lead in addressing shortages amounts to a remarkable deference by a president who typically makes himself the center of the action. It also contrasts with his own self-description as a wartime president leading a great battle against an invisible enemy.
It underscores both pragmatic and political imperatives for Mr. Trump, reflecting a traditional federalist approach that eschews imposing a one-size-fits-all national standard on states. But it also shows the president’s desire to blame the governors rather than accept any responsibility for shortages of ventilators, masks and other critical supplies.
The most fundamental point of conflict centers over how broadly the virtual lockdown of many states in the Midwest and on the East and West Coasts should be expanded. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said stay-at-home orders should be extended to the entire nation.
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