CHICAGO — Gov. J.B. Pritzker sparked a Twitter spat with President Donald Trump Sunday morning after the governor claimed that the lack of federal action has made it harder and costlier for Illinois to fight the coronavirus outbreak.
The flare-up began after Pritzker told CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper that the White House should issue a nationwide shelter-in-place order as the number of cases soar, and complained that the lack of federal initiative has forced Illinois to pay more for crucial supplies as they compete with other states.
“These orders that the governors have led on, you know, I led with canceling gatherings of a certain size in our state and then we closed schools,” Pritzker said. “We moved on now to a stay-at home order. These should’ve been done nationally, they haven’t been. But I’ve got to protect the 12.7 million people that live in my state and I’m dedicated to that. It’s their health and safety that matters most to me. It will work, it will work.”
Pritzker also said the White House has not done enough to protect first responders and health care workers.
“This should’ve been a coordinated effort by the federal government,” Pritzker said. “So, yes, we’re competing against each other, we’re competing against other countries. It’s a … wild west out there and, indeed, we’re overpaying, I would say, for PPE (personal protective equipment) because of that competition.”
Soon after his appearance, Trump shot back with a tweet dismising the criticism of his efforts as “Fake News.”
“Governor of Illinois, and a very small group of certain other Governors, together with Fake News @CNN & Concast (MSDNC), shouldn’t be blaming the Federal Government for their own shortcomings,” he tweeted. “We are there to back you up should you fail, and always will be!”
Pritzker tweeted back, “You wasted precious months when you could’ve taken action to protect Americans & Illinoisans. You should be leading a national response instead of throwing tantrums from the back seat. Where were the tests when we needed them? Where’s the PPE? Get off Twitter & do your job.”
Soon Mayor Lori Lightfoot chimed in with a tweet: “Dear Lord — please step up and be a leader. While you have been yammering about hoaxes and fake news, the COVID-19 pandemic has hit all over America. @GovPritzker and others have filled this country’s leadership gap. Lead or get out of their way.”
Both Pritzker and Lightfoot have been frequent critics of Trump’s response to the outbreak, from his early dismissals of its seriousness to his mixed signals of what the federal government is doing.
On the CNN program, Pritzker said keeping people in their homes during the outbreak, as harmful as it might be to the economy, is necessary to save lives.
“I don’t relish it,” he said. “Frankly, this is a competition, you know, in the decision-making between saving lives and saving livelihoods, and I’ve had to make some tough decisions here but I believe this is the right thing to do.”
But again taking a swipe at the White House, he added that “there’s no doubt that the economy is being significantly harmed by the delays that the federal government, you know, had during January and February, getting going dealing with this. That’s why we’ve all had to go on stay at home orders, or keeping kids at home and closing bars and restaurants and so on.
“So what would I like?” he added. “First, we’ve got to fund unemployment. There’s no question about that. The federal government needs to step up. It appears to be stepping up on that.”
He said he wasn’t opposed to sending checks to individuals, but said someone like billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg doesn’t need a check for $1,000. State governments are being slammed just as individuals are, he said.
“All across the country, our budgets are going to be slammed,” he said. “You know, our revenues are going down no doubt precipitously and our spending has to go up because we’re saving people’s lives and, you know, we’re trying to at least put some money in their pockets. So we need help. We would like block grants to the states. We’ve got to go back, no doubt, to the 2008 era to look what was done there and try to replicate those, in fact, bigger because that is what is necessary in this time of national emergency.”
Asked by Tapper about business people complaining that the response is harming the economy, he said their criticisms “are not going to age well. I think when you look back on it a year from now, that’s not going to look, you know, like it was the right thing to write at the time.
“I know this is very harmful to small businesses — to all businesses, really, what we’ve had to do across the country,” he said. “But this is the right thing to do. We’ve got to save lives. Now is the moment. So this is what we are going to do. And the business people in Illinois, frankly, I’ve been amazed. Every businessperson — every CEO that I’ve called and asked them to do something for the state or for their employees or for the people — has stepped up to the plate.”
First Published: March 23, 2020, 4:29 a.m.
