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President Trump on Tuesday called it the “scariest day” of his life when he had learned the United States might not have enough ventilators to fight the novel coronavirus.
“The scariest day of my life was about a month ago, when after a long day of meetings my team told me that we were going to be needing 130,000 ventilators — that we were short hundreds of thousands of ventilators,” he said during the daily White House press briefing.
The president went on to blame the Obama administration for lack of oversight in the past, and he accused sitting governors of putting unrealistic demands on the federal government.
“This is the system we inherited,” Trump continued. “I had governors requesting unreasonable sums that the federal government just didn’t have and, you look at the states… The states were not prepared. I knew that every person who needed a ventilator, and didn’t get one, would die.”
TRUMP ANNOUNCES US WILL HALT FUNDING TO WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION OVER CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE
After learning of the ventilator shortage, Trump said he instructed his staff to move quickly in an effort to ration and distribute the machines to those who needed them most.
“I instructed my team to move heaven and Earth to make sure that this didn’t happen,” he added.
The president also announced the halting of all U.S. federal funds to the World Health Organization (WHO) for embracing “political correctness” over “lifesaving measures.”
Trump added: “The WHO failed in this duty and must be held accountable.”
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As of Tuesday, there were nearly 600,000 cases of the coronavirus in the United States and just over 25,000 fatalities.
Fox News’ Gregg Re contributed to this report.
