PropertyValue
?:author
?:datePublished
  • 2020-03-27 (xsd:date)
?:headline
  • Did Trump Say Governors Had To Treat Him Well To Get COVID-19 Supplies? (en)
?:inLanguage
?:itemReviewed
?:mentions
?:reviewBody
  • As state governments attempted — sometimes contentiously — to coordinate with the U.S. federal government in obtaining supplies and equipment needed to deal with the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic in March 2020, President Donald Trump suggested, according to news reports, that governors should show some appreciation first: More specifically, a quote meme that was widely circulated on social media held that Trump had overtly declared that if state governors wanted to obtain masks and ventilators from government reserves, those governors have to treat me well: Although the meme was based on something Trump said, the wording and context it offers differs somewhat from what actually took place. During a Fox News Virtual Town Hall event with Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and members of the Coronavirus Task Force on March 24, Trump was asked whether his working with state governors was proving helpful in stemming the spread of the coronavirus. In his response, Trump both complimented and criticized the way in which governors had been working with him: Although Trump mentioned ventilators in his response, he said nothing about masks, nor did he address state governors and rhetorically ask them, You want ventilators and masks from the federal government's reserves to treat your citizens? That sentence was someone else's attempt to provide implied context for the sentence that followed it in the meme, but it was misleadingly placed inside quotation marks as if it were something Trump had literally said. Also, in his response, Trump did not say that governors (or anyone else) have to treat me well. As documented in the above transcript and the following video clip, Trump asserted that they have to treat us well: Viewers could reasonably infer that the pronoun they referred to governors, but the referent for the us who needed to be treated well in Trump's mind was somewhat ambiguous. Was he referring to the federal government? To his administration? To the coronavirus task force? Or to himself personally (via the royal we)? In what manner Trump meant governors had to treat us well was also ambiguous. By not criticizing him or his administration? By publicly expressing praise or appreciation? By making concessions on issues unrelated to the current pandemic? Trump did indeed suggest governors needed to engage in some form of behavioral quid pro quo in obtaining assistance from the federal government to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, but not as literally or specifically as the wording in the meme displayed above asserts. During a press briefing three days following the town hall event referenced in the text meme, Trump more specifically suggested that his choice would be not to respond to governors who did not express sufficient appreciation, although he allowed that Vice President Pence (who chairs the coronavirus task force) was in fact choosing to engage the supposedly unappreciative governors: (en)
?:reviewRating
rdf:type
?:url