Analysis: Trump gutted the checks on his power when they were most needed
WASHINGTON — Several weeks ago, President Donald Trump forced the Food and Drug Administration to reverse a safety ruling and clear the way for one of the nation's premier defense contractors to sell, service and operate new machines that reprocess N95 face masks for health care workers.
Time may tell whether Trump's intervention benefited health care workers and taxpayers as much as it helped him and the company. But it is already clear how Trump has killed oversight, and how he is taking advantage of its death to help himself politically in a re-election year. Eric Havian, a whistleblower law expert at the law firm of Constantine Cannon, argues that while"temporary trimming of oversight is surely understandable" during a crisis, whistleblowers offer a"supplement to the government's oversight."
When he stepped in to help the company, he was desperate to show he was taking action after a slow-footed response to the disease's arrival in the United States. He was on the wrong end of a daily brawl with governors of both parties who pleaded for the federal government to provide supplies to their states amid harrowing shortages. Politically, he needed to first quiet a bipartisan chorus of criticism and then change its tune.
The political value of delivering for DeWine and Ohio was more clear — it's been 80 years since a winning presidential candidate didn't take the state. The same was true for Trump's direction of ventilators to the battleground states of Colorado and Arizona and his careful attention to the equipment needs of potentially decisive Florida.
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