Trump says he has authority, not governors, to reopen economy

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump declared Monday during a contentious press briefing that he, not the nation’s governors, has the power to decide to open up states shut down in an effort to contain the coronavirus outbreak.

“The president of the United States calls the shots,” Trump said. “If we weren’t here for the states, you would have had a problem with this country like you’ve never seen before. We were here to back them up.”

It was an argument that clearly did not carry the day with America’s blue-state governors, at whose feet Trump had laid the responsibility for the lack of personal protective equipment that forced nurses and doctors in the nation’s hot spots to reuse protective masks and gloves at the risk of their personal safety.

Monday also brought good news — a flattening of hospitalizations in New York — which prompted Gov. Andrew Cuomo to talk about opening the state for business.

To announce their decision to collaborate on a regional plan to open up the seven states saddled with more than 60 percent of the coronavirus deaths in the country, Cuomo conducted a public conference call with New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, Delaware Gov. John Carney, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf and Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo — Democrats all.

Likewise, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he would release a plan on Tuesday for opening his state in consultation with Washington and Oregon.

To Trump’s claim that only the president has the authority to open up the country, Cuomo noted that Trump put responsibility for dealing with the virus on governors when their health care systems were swamped.

“The federal government could have said, I want to close down the economy,” Cuomo told CNN. “They didn’t. They said we’re going to leave it to the states. Now all of a sudden when it comes time to opening the economy, it’s up to the federal government’s responsibility.”

Trump’s position that his power is “total” did not play well with George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, a left-leaning scholar who opposed the Democrats’ impeachment effort, but now took issue with Trump’s claim that a president’s authority “is total.”

The Constitution was written precisely to “deny that particular claim. It also reserved to the states (&individuals) rights not expressly given to the federal government,” Turley tweeted.

U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee that conducted hearings that led to Trump’s impeachment in the House, but not a conviction in the Senate, responded, “President Trump thinks he is above the law. He thinks he is the state,” and added, that is precisely why the nation’s founders “drafted the remedy of impeachment.”

The drama that consumed Monday morning involved Trump’s retweet from a supporter who suggested Trump should fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, who serves as America’s doctor on Trump’s coronavirus task force, after Fauci said on CNN that the administration might have saved lives if it had acted sooner to fight the outbreak.

Later Fauci explained that while he thinks the outbreak could have been handled better early on, he did not realize that the virus was his “worst nightmare,” easily transmissible and more lethal than first understood.

Amodei ‘apologizes’

Angry at a New York Times story that chronicled Trump’s “failure” to address the outbreak early, Trump unloaded on members of the news media as briefing room screens showed videos with footage of experts and pundits predicting that the coronavirus would not become a pandemic.

“The media minimized the risk from the start — While President Trump took decisive action,” were footage headlines.

American Democracy Legal Fund President Brad Woodhouse said in a statement, “Desperate and running scared in a tough re-election fight, the president aired what clear as day appeared to be a campaign ad — in the middle of what was supposed to be an official White House press briefing on an ongoing and deadly global pandemic.”

A reporter got in a question on a Small Business Administration rule that has prevented small businesses that generate a third of their revenue from gaming to apply for CARES Act loans, to the disappointment of the Nevada delegation.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that his office is coming out with additional guidance on the issue.

After the briefing, U.S. Rep. Mark Amodei, the lone Republican in the Nevada delegation, sent out a satirical statement: “Amodei Apologizes for His Failure to Recognize that SBA outranks the Treasury Secretary and the White House.”

“I apologize to the industry in 43 states and their employees for my failure to deliver a real-time solution to an agency out of touch with the concept of economic disaster. This is all the more disappointing since there is no interest group in the nation arguing to exclude these people. Meaning, we are fighting ourselves,” Amodei wrote.

An American Gaming Association statement said, “While we haven’t yet seen the revised rule, we anticipate that the SBA did not fully address the antiquated, discriminatory policies that have excluded gaming companies for relief under the CARES Act.”

Contact Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com or 202-662-7391. Follow @DebraJSaunders on Twitter.