Heilemann: Trump Can’t Blame Governors; Fighting Virus a Job Only the Federal Gov’t Can Take On

EXCERPT:

HEILEMANN: “I think that there are three complements of what Tom is talking about, Willie, that I think are all super important and that he we still very much need to focus on and need to demand and expect from the president. One of them is embodied in Tom’s proposal is a respect for scientific expertise and professionalism and -- and -- and for the voices of people who have actually expertise about questions related to science and medicine. That’s the first thing. The second thing is kind of — underlying it is this notion of common national unity, bringing the country together to defeat an enemy, and not just this enemy but the future enemies like this enemy that we're going to be confronting down the line. So a call to national unity and purpose. And then -- and then thirdly, it is a new agency that Tom is talking about, and I think, you know, most people outside the context of this crisis, the notion that government is already big enough and the government needs to know its limits, those are the core precepts we live by. But right now we recognize with the size of the stimulus and the size of these emergency packages that the government must do more. And so the federal government has to be at the center of our response here. All three of the elements, whether you proceed down with the tangible proposal that Tom is putting forward or not, they have to be core at the way Donald Trump looks at this if we’re going to have a chance minimizing at this point the kind of damage that lies ahead. The damage is going to be terrible in these next few weeks. Donald Trump and the people around them need to get their hands around all of those elements and try to proceed with a sense of respectful expertise with a unifying and consistent message and one that recognizes that there’s a bump of stuff that need to happen and that only the federal government can do. And that it's not OK, it's not sufficient to blame governors to say that the states can handle these matters, they can’t. This is a job that only the federal government is equipped to take on."