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Friday, Sen. Tammy Duckworth groundlessly and maliciously accused President Trump of killing Americans by not “sending more ventilators,” and the Trump campaign angrily responded by tweeting: “It’s a pretty sick thing to lie like this!”

Duckworth made the slanderous accusation on Twitter in a response to President Trump’s post about NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s panic-stricken call for 40,000 ventilators. He had written: “Cuomo ridiculously wanted ’40 thousand Ventilators’. We gave him a small fraction of that number, and it was plenty. State should have had them in stockpile!”

The Illinois senator charged that lives were lost due to a lack of ventilators, in spite of the fact that Cuomo himself had declared that no one died as a result of not having a ventilator.

“As he watches Americans die by the thousands,” Duckworth wrote, “Trump remains incapable of showing empathy or leadership. He *could* have saved lives by sending more ventilators, but he didn’t. That’s true regardless of who Donald ‘I don’t take responsibility at all’ Trump tries to blame.”

Tammy Duckworth is lying. Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, said no one — NO ONE — died because they didn’t have a ventilator. It’s a pretty sick thing to lie like this! — Trump War Room – Text TRUMP to 88022 (@TrumpWarRoom) April 18, 2020

The Trump campaign fired right back, calling Duckworth a liar.

“Tammy Duckworth is lying,” tweeted the Trump War Room. “Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, said no one — NO ONE — died because they didn’t have a ventilator. It’s a pretty sick thing to lie like this!”

Cuomo laid out the truth of the matter earlier in the week …

Democrat Governor of New York: “Have we saved everyone? No. But have we lost anyone because we didn’t have a bed, or we didn’t have a ventilator, or we didn’t have health care staff? No. People we lost are the people we couldn’t save.”pic.twitter.com/eONgDhWFGi — Trump War Room – Text TRUMP to 88022 (@TrumpWarRoom) April 14, 2020

On Friday, The National Review posted an article entitled, “The Ventilator Shortage That Wasn’t,” in which it was pointed out that on March 27, Gov. Cuomo had said New York needed as many as 40,000 ventilators but had only 12,000. By April 6, he had backed off his alarming call for more ventilators, admitting, “We’re ok, and we have some in reserve.”

“Now New York appears to have passed the apex,” reported the Review yesterday. “Deaths, a lagging indicator, crested at 799 on April 9 and hit 606 on April 16, the lowest figure since April 6. Hospitalizations are also declining, and on April 16 also hit their lowest level since April 6. Cuomo today has so many ventilators he is giving them away: On April 15, he said he was sending 100 of them to Michigan and 50 to Maryland. On April 16, he announced he was sending 100 to New Jersey.”

New Jersey, the next hardest-hit state in the U.S. also has a surplus of ventilators according to the Review. “New Jersey, with 8,011 total hospitalizations as of April 16, also has more ventilators than it is currently using and also may have passed its apex; as of April 16, the fewest New Jerseyans were on ventilators since April 8. So far, the peak was April 14, when 1705 patients were on ventilators. Yet before Cuomo’s announcement, New Jersey reported that 46 percent of its ventilators were still available.”

In spite of various state officials who were running around with their hair on fire weeks ago about the certain doom in store as the result of ventilator shortages, it has turned out that availability of the machines has not been an issue. As of Thursday, the author reported that there is no evidence in the media that any state has suffered from a lack of respirators, as they are sometimes called.

Nonetheless, Duckworth is choosing to roll with her baseless accusations. Friday night, she doubled down on her political malfeasance, again claiming that ventilators are not available to those in need. MSNBC provided her a platform for her dubious claims and she tweeted out a clip of that appearance …

For Americans in need of ventilators at hospitals in Illinois or anywhere in America right now, they don’t care where it comes from. Or who is to blame. That doesn’t matter. What they need is help. That’s what effective leaders do. And it’s the opposite of what Trump has done. pic.twitter.com/vUDHzo6waR — Tammy Duckworth (@SenDuckworth) April 18, 2020

There have been numerous reports of states that have passed their peaks of coronavirus infections, and were initially begging for more ventilators, are now sending untold numbers of the machines to states yet on the upside of the infection curve, ensuring plenty of capacity to deal with the worst-case now envisioned.