Describing himself as a, President Donald Trump describes himself as a “wartime president” fighting an invisible enemy upon invoking rarely used emergency powers to marshal critical medical supplies against the Coronavirus pandemic.
Trump also signed an aid package that will guarantee sick leave to workers who fall ill.
Yet he seemed to minimize the urgency of the decision, later tweeting that he “only signed the Defense Production Act to combat the Chinese Virus should we need to invoke it in a worst case scenario in the future.”
“Hopefully there will be no need,” he added, “but we are all in this TOGETHER!”
The mixed messaging came as Trump took a series of other extraordinary steps to steady the nation, its day-to-day life suddenly and fundamentally altered.
The Canada-U.S. border, the world’s longest, was effectively closed, save for commerce and essential travel, while the administration pushed its plan to send relief checks to millions of Americans.
Trump said he will expand the nation’s diagnostic testing capacity and deploy a Navy hospital ship to New York City, which is rapidly becoming an epicenter of the pandemic, and another such ship to the West Coast.
But as Trump laid out efforts to help the economy, markets plummeted. Gone were nearly all the gains that the Dow Jones Industrial Average had made since Trump took office.
The White House urged hospitals to cancel all elective surgeries to reduce the risk of being overwhelmed by cases. The president was pressed on why a number of celebrities, like professional basketball players, seemed to have easier access to diagnostic tests than ordinary citizens.
The government has told Americans to avoid groups of more than 10 people and the elderly to stay home while a pointed reminder was given to millennial to follow the guidelines and avoid social gatherings.
Trump likened the effort to the measures taken during World War II and said it would require national “sacrifice.”
