Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) got candid on Tuesday when asked about President Donald Trump’s claim that there haven’t been issues with the chaotic testing system during the COVID-19 outbreak.
“I haven’t heard about testing being a problem,” Trump told all the nations’ governors during a conference call on Monday.
“Yeah, that’s just not true,” Hogan said the next day during an interview with NPR’s “Inside Edition” host Rachel Martin. “I mean, I know that they’ve taken some steps to create new tests, but they’re not actually produced and distributed out to the states.”
“So it’s an aspirational thing and they’ve got some new things in the works, but they’re not actually out on the streets and no state has enough testing,” he added.
The governor told NPR that he and his colleagues were following the advice of the medical experts on the White House coronavirus task force, such as doctors Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx.
Fellow Republican Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts had a similarly frank reaction last week to Trump’s rosy vision of the coronavirus outbreak.
“Yeah, no,” Baker said when a reporter asked if his state would be ready to lift social distancing measures by Easter, as Trump had hoped.
