Gov. Jay Inslee: Trump Has Demonstrated an ‘Abject Lack of Leadership’ Amid Pandemic

As the United States passes the grim milestone of 100,000 coronavirus deaths, many are examining the state and federal response to the outbreak. 

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) says his state was as prepared for the virus as it realistically could be.

“We’ve had a variety of emergency scenarios, but there is no preparing 7 million people for something they’ve never experienced before,” Inslee said during an interview with Rolling Stone Magazine.”

He added, “It’s just a shock to the system.”

While there has been controversy over when Americans started practicing social distancing, Inslee defended his state, “For those that say we should have started social distancing the day the first case was identified in Wuhan, you know, intellectually that might have made sense, but to think 7 million people would accept that — they would not have accepted that.”

He explained, “You can’t expect a large group of people to accept the necessity of things they’ve never experienced before.”

However, he said the federal response and the assistance his state received was, in his opinion, lacking.

“We also assumed that we would have a functioning leadership at the federal level that would help be a stable, effective partner, and that has not been the case because of the abject lack of leadership from the president.”

“So that was another sort of unanticipated result that has caused enormous problems in our response. We didn’t plan on that,” he added.