AP FACT CHECK: Trump, ‘wartime’ pandemic leader or ‘backup’?

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/ap-fact-check-trump-wartime-pandemic-leader-or-backup

  Is he a wartime president or a backup point man? President Donald Trump seems to go back and forth on that, or both ways at once, in responding to the coronavirus pandemic that takes more lives by the hour.

In his recent rhetoric, the president who declared “It’s a war” and invoked wartime powers enabling him to direct the production and shipment of critical medical supplies sought to avoid responsibility for persistent shortages. “The federal government,” he told New York’s governor, “is merely a back-up for state governments.” Meantime the government changed its online description of the national stockpile to put state responsibility more front and center.

And after public-health authorities warned that infection and death are spreading at a needlessly fast rate because Americans are not respecting social-distancing guidelines as they should, Trump incongruously asserted we should all be “thrilled” with how that’s going. Separately, he bragged inaccurately about his Facebook followers.

A look at how some statements over the past week compare with the facts: