Trump lashes out about coronavirus testing after governors plead for help

Even some GOP governors, however, have criticised president's handling of breathing machines and testing

Donald Trump continued on Monday trying to shift responsibility for coronavirus testing to state governments, accusing some governors of "playing a very dangerous political game."

The president made the allegation in a pair of tweets that also amounted to Mr Trump again saying he knew best that state governments were requesting too many ventilators a few weeks back. Since, however, tens of thousands of infected Americans have passed away, driving down the need for the breathing machines.

And, as always, the increasingly aggrieved US president described Democrats as using the coronavirus pandemic as a political bludgeon, aiming to deliver a knockout punch ahead of November's election.

"Last month all you heard from the Radical Left, Do Nothing Democrats was, 'Ventilators, Ventilators, Ventilators.' They screamed it loud & clear, & thought they had us cold, even though it was the State's task. But everyone got their V's, with many to spare," the president wrote.

Hospitals around the country, however, have reportedly experimented with all sorts of non-ventilator alternatives, from machines designed for sleep apnea and moving patients into positions other than laying on their backs to help them breath.

But Mr Trump, a black-and-white thinker by all accounts, continued to publicly focus only on the number of ventilators in federal and state stockpiles, which do exceed the expected demand even as coronavirus cases surged to their anticipated peaks in places like the New York metropolitan area.

'Now they scream....," he wrote over two tweets "... 'Testing, Testing, Testing,' again playing a very dangerous political game."

"States, not the Federal Government, should be doing the Testing - But we will work with the Governors and get it done," he added. "This is easy compared to the fast production of thousands of complex Ventilators!"

But a list of state chiefs executive, including Maryland Republican Larry Hogan, over the weekend accused the president and other White House leaders of being untruthful about there being adequate testing.

"To try to push this off and say the governors have plenty of testing and they should just get to work on testing, that somehow we aren't doing our job, is just absolutely false," Hogan, chairman of the National Governors Association, said Sunday on CNN.

"Every governor in America has been pushing and fighting and clawing to get more tests," he said, "not only from the federal government, but from every private lab in America, and from all across the world."