President Donald Trump speaks during the daily briefing of the White House Coronavirus Task Force at the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House April 13, 2020 in Washington, DC.

WASHINGTON — As the nation entered its third straight week of near total economic shutdown on Monday, President Donald Trump falsely claimed that it will be his decision when the nation's businesses will reopen during the coronavirus pandemic, and not a choice left to individual governors.

But legal experts say Trump is wrong. For one, they note that U.S. law gives state governors wide latitude to protect the health and safety of their constituents. Secondly, they point out that Trump never declared a nationwide lockdown, so there's no mechanism by which he could order a nationwide reopening now, namely.

Still, that did not prevent Trump from claiming that his power is nearly boundless. During a press briefing on the coronavirus Monday, he said, "When somebody is president of the United States, the authority is total."

Trump's comments on Monday evening came in response to questions from reporters about an announcement the president had made earlier in the day. Citing media reports that it would be up to governors when to "open up the states," Trump wrote, "this is incorrect. It is the decision of the President, and for many good reasons."

TRUMP TWEET

Trump did not detail the "many good reasons" this was true in further tweets. A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to questions from CNBC about what the president meant by this.

Asked during the press briefing about his claim, he did not detail any specific legal underpinning for his claim of power.

In reality, the authority to protect the public health of U.S. citizens by directing shutdowns and shelter-in-place orders lies squarely with the nation's governors, and not with the president.

"State and local governments have strong police power to protect their citizens and so I'm unaware of any way in which the federal government could basically try to override anything the states and cities have been doing to protect the public health of their citizens," said William Buzbee, a professor at Georgetown University Law School and an expert in federalism.

"Since the president has mainly acted in a sort of bully pulpit sort of way, there's nothing in particular that he would be reversing or restarting," Buzbee told CNBC.

"I don't know what it means for the president to 'open up the states,'" conservative legal scholar Josh Blackman told NBC News on Monday.

"The president does make certain declarations about critical infrastructure and other guidelines that states generally follow. But the president cannot order the governors to do anything. I don't even think he could withhold funding from states, absent a congressional appropriation," he said.