The strategic reserve of medical supplies is like an oil reserve, Trump added, except more valuable. Asked about reports that governors are caught in bidding wars for the life-saving machines, Trump said: “that shouldn’t be happening.” All they need to do is ask, he said.
But the president has repeatedly dismissed governors’ requests for medical equipment. In an interview with Fox News last week, he said “I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators. You go into major hospitals sometimes, and they’ll have two ventilators. And now all of a sudden they’re saying, ‘Can we order 30,000 ventilators?’”
Even today, he added that though governors could ask, in some cases, “they want to have more than they think they need”.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2020/mar/31/coronavirus-us-live-new-york-governor-peak-cases-trump-america-outbreak-pandemic