MD Gov. Hogan: Trump Was ‘Confused’ at Presser — Lab List Was a ‘Smokescreen’

Tuesday on ABC’S “The View,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said that President Donald Trump attacked him at Monday’s coronavirus press conference because he was “confused” about the list of labs Trump highlighted. Hogan said they were federal labs that until yesterday the governors did not have access too and it is test kits that are lacking.

Hogan said, “Well, it’s interesting we had a great call yesterday, the vice president and with the president’s own coronavirus task force where I thanked the vice president and many members of the team for some of the progress they made over the past couple of weeks. I’m chairing the National Governors’ Association. And then they went over to discuss some of the labs that are in each of the states. They provided us with a list of labs. We were very familiar with all the labs in our states already. The list they provided us was all federal labs, which I pointed out, which we hadn’t had any access too. But our discussion realty was about tests. It wasn’t about labs. The president seemed to be a little confused yesterday in his press conference. I have no idea what set him off.”

He continued, “We had some tremendous success on getting tests on our own, which is exactly what the president has asked all the governors to do. He said we needed to be leading, and we need to be stepping up, the governors needed to go get their own testing. That’s what we’ve done. And we had a very productive call with his whole team yesterday afternoon, which I was leading on behave of the Governors’ Association. The president was not on that call. I was somewhat taken aback by his sort of biting attacks on me yesterday. I have no idea what that was about.”

He added, “The number one problem in America from the beginning of this crisis has been the lack of available testing. That’s been a problem every single governor in the country has had that, Republicans and Democrats. The smokescreen yesterday was about labs. It has nothing to do with test kits. But the test kits that nobody had enough of, the president told us to go out and get on our own. Governors have been fighting to get those from every domestic company in America from the federal government and from sources around the globe.”

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