WASHINGTON — In early March, Mike Bowen, the executive vice president of the medical mask manufacturer Prestige Ameritech, found the perfect way to drum up some federal business: He went on Steve Bannon's podcast, which is highly popular at the White House.

"If the government wants to throw some money at it, we can hire more people and build more machines," Bowen said during an appearance on the "War Room" podcast co-hosted by Bannon, who was the chief executive officer of Donald Trump's presidential 2016 campaign. "We're kind of out there on our own, and we are doing everything that we can possibly do on our own."

A month later, at the explicit request of the White House, Prestige Ameritech had a $9.5 million contract with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It then won another deal with the state of Texas and was given 50 National Guard members, deployed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, to work shifts at its suburban Fort Worth manufacturing facility.

Bannon told NBC News that his team connected Bowen to Peter Navarro, a top economic and trade adviser to Trump, who, like Bowen and much of Trump's political base, has long been upset about the movement of U.S. factories to Mexico and Asia.

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Prestige Ameritech's deal with FEMA is one of only two that NBC News could find in the history of the federal contracting database that says explicitly that a White House ordered it up — "directed by the White House," according to the notes entered by a contracting officer.

"There's a big operation over there doing sourcing," Bannon said. "Navarro and all the guys listen to the show every day."

For the White House, the episode is a perfect example of how the president's coronavirus task force cut through red tape to reward a domestic manufacturer at a time when supplies are limited and the task of obtaining them from overseas is fraught with rapidly rising trade barriers and the risk of receiving substandard products.

But it also shows something else: how Trump and his top aides have played favorites in awarding contracts and allocating scarce resources.

Using the unilateral authority of the White House, Trump and his aides have consolidated power in a period of national crisis, picking winners and losers based in part on personal relationships, ideological affinity and partisan loyalty.

Ultimately, that favoritism has created a two-track system of haves and have-nots in what Trump calls the "war" against the coronavirus, a model revealed in dozens of interviews that NBC News conducted with federal, state and local officials, health industry professionals, emergency response veterans working on the crisis and current and former White House officials.

Put simply, the fight for survival among businesses related to the COVID-19 fight — and for a slice of the billions of dollars going out the door — is about political influence.

Vice President Mike Pence arrives for a coronavirus task force briefing at the White House on April 16, 2020. Alex Brandon / AP file

Most of the decisions are made by members of Vice President Mike Pence's coronavirus task force, which works closely with White House senior adviser Jared Kushner's innovation team and a series of sub-task forces that are primarily charged with acquiring and distributing scarce goods. Because there are so many genuinely needy entities and there's so little to give, those decisions are zero-sum trade-offs, just like the awarding of a limited supply of federal contracts to the many businesses vying to take a piece of the action.

There's growing evidence that Trump and his aides are using his authority over both the contracting and allocation processes for political gain. It's easy to chalk that up to partisanship, but the record suggests that while Trump favors GOP allies the most, he is more interested in bringing politicians and businesses into his fold than in following the straight axis of the Republican-Democratic divide.

Much of the flexibility in who gets supplies comes from a secretive "adjudication" process in which senior political appointees have the power to circumvent formulas designed to apportion test kits, ventilators, masks, gloves, gowns and other personal protective equipment based on evolving needs.

"There's a lot of politics involved," said a person familiar with the adjudications. "Senior leadership from [Capitol] Hill can call up and say 'ship 500 ventilators' and 500 ventilators go out."

At the same time, front-line responders in big cities and in some Democratic states, from Phoenix to Detroit to New York, are scrambling to put together homemade gear because they can't get government-issued equipment and the masks, gloves and gowns they're trying to buy on the private market are often being delayed or rerouted. Most of the sources experienced in various aspects of emergency management who spoke to NBC News say the politicization of the disaster response is unprecedented in modern history.

Here are a few examples:

Key allies are rewarded: Sens. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., and Martha McSally, R-Ariz., two of their party's most politically vulnerable lawmakers, have been able to claim credit publicly for using their influence with Trump to secure ventilators for their states. Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., who presides over a state that is both Trump's official home and crucial to his re-election hopes, says the president has delivered everything he needs. Meanwhile, other big jurisdictions across the country say they are scrambling to find test kits and personal protective equipment.

The politics work as reward and punishment: Kushner has praised the president for being "very, very hands-on" in determining where goods are shipped, and Trump said over the weekend that he might withhold federal support for the states of governors who don't accede to his request that they loosen stay-at-home restrictions.

Those outside the circle are vulnerable: Last week, it took the intervention of a powerful Democratic House chairman to stop federal agents from seizing a shipment of personal protective equipment acquired privately by a Massachusetts hospital system. Frustrated state and municipal officials complain frequently — almost exclusively on the condition of anonymity to avoid hurting their prospects of getting future aid — about reports that expected shipments have been rerouted or seized by the federal government.

Some hard-hit states are left scrambling for White House workarounds: Two Democratic governors, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois and Gavin Newsom of California, as well as Republican Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, have cut deals with foreign suppliers to go around the White House's system. Some state-level officials say they have concluded that the White House's moves to corner the market on medical supplies has made it impossible for them to acquire what they need.

Senior administration officials say the acquisition and allocation systems are free from political influence, even as Trump talks openly about the importance of deference to him in the process.

"It's outrageous that the media would ask or even speculate that the resources being delivered by the federal government to the states is somehow based on politics," Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, said in a statement emailed to NBC News. "This is about saving lives, and the Trump administration has been working with governors and their teams since January on COVID-19 coordination. Every level of government needs to deliver data-driven solutions and that is what President Trump is doing in partnership."

But a federal government veteran of national emergency response said the influence coming from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. is unparalleled.

"I've never seen anything directed by the White House like this before," said the source, who insisted on anonymity out of fear of retribution.