President Donald Trump recently announced that Colorado would be receiving an additional 100 ventilators from FEMA’s national stockpile to combat COVID-19.

This should be a moment of celebration for Coloradans suffering from COVID-19 and their families. Instead, partisan politics has seized the moment with U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette maliciously accusing the president of providing lifesaving ventilators to Colorado as a political favor to Sen. Cory Gardner. The Denver Post even went so far as to accuse the president of treating ventilators like “emoluments.”

But what is their evidence? They cite President Trump’s audacity to credit Sen. Gardner for making the request.

“If a Republican senator calls the president up does that mean he just gets some?” DeGette is quoted as saying. “And then the president tweets out ‘good job?’ That doesn’t seem to be according to any kind of a process. It just seems political to me.”

According to Bloomberg News “there’s no evidence that politics is affecting decisions” related to FEMA’s distribution of ventilators. On the contrary, the Trump administration has been transparent about the process FEMA uses to distribute ventilators among the states.

On Wednesday, Dr. Deborah Birx stated the federal government is making data-driven decisions about how to allocate critical supplies. This includes exercising case by case discretion in each state, analyzing the “number of cases, … the hospital capacity, and [the equipment] each of those hospitals have.” Indeed, Dr. Birx stated that nearly every single state with more infections than Colorado had received ventilators from FEMA as of Wednesday. Given the more dire situations in high transmission states like New York, this is completely understandable.

Colorado officials rightly want to prepare the state for the possibility of a surge in infections. However, when Gov. Jared Polis was asked directly if Coloradans should be concerned about FEMA superseding state ventilator orders, Polis replied “as long as Colorado residents are staying at home I think we will be okay with regard to the ventilator situation.” A Colorado ventilator briefing provided to officials suggested the state has spare capacity and is “prepared for a spike should it occur.”

While some elected officials continue to play politics during this pandemic, Sen. Gardner has been instrumental in working across party lines, agencies, countries, and branches of government to secure the vital resources for Colorado. “Senator Gardner, who I talk with multiple times everyday, has done everything I’ve asked to help in our response,” said Gov. Jared Polis on March 23rd. According to Polis, Gardner has used his “unique role” as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia to facilitate conversations between Colorado and PPE suppliers in Vietnam and South Korea. “With the connections Sen. Gardner has in Southeast Asia, it’s been very helpful,” Polis said Thursday in a tele-townhall.

The crisis we are facing is not a moment for partisan rancor. I’ve told Polis that I am regularly praying for him along with Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Michael Bennet, Cory Gardner, and all members of the Colorado congressional delegation, regardless of party affiliation.

Coloradans appreciate what Trump and Gardner have done to save lives amid this pandemic. Let’s hope that some politicians can put aside their partisan disdain for Gardner and work together with the administration to ensure every hospital from Denver to New York City is properly resourced with the supplies our healthcare workers need to overcome this epidemic.

Jeff Hunt is the director of the Centennial Institute. The views expressed are personal and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the Centennial Institute or Colorado Christian University.

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