A Tale of Two Washingtons

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FRONTLINE

Pbs, Tv & Film, Wgbh, Documentaries, Frontline

4.8 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 18 April 2020

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What the feud between President Trump and Washington Gov. Inslee reveals about federal-state tensions in the coronavirus fight. In his conversation with Gov. Inslee, FRONTLINE correspondent Miles O’Brien discovers that “what should be a partnership with the federal government is like this hostile relationship.” Inslee describes a scenario in which states are left competing with each other for scarce resources: “We are searching the world for every potential warehouse that has any of this personal protective equipment… and states are bidding against one another,” he tells O’Brien. “It would be much more efficient, economically and otherwise, if the federal government was playing a more vigorous role.” Listen to the podcast now, and stay tuned for O’Brien’s documentary Coronavirus Pandemic, premiering April 21, which explores the differing responses to the coronavirus outbreak in Washington D.C. and Washington State — where the first known U.S. case of COVID-19 was detected.

Transcript

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0:00.0	So let's go to early March now and this is right about the time you declared a
0:04.0	state of emergency and it was also right around the time that the president called
0:09.9	you a snake. At that point did you get the sense that you as a governor and
0:18.9	the state of Washington were sort of on their own and the the federal
0:21.8	cavalry was not coming? Yes, but we didn't ever depend on that leadership
0:28.5	coming out of the White House so it's not something that we were surprised by.
0:32.4	We always knew that we would have to lead the charge
0:35.7	given the president's reluctance to to really exercise leadership on this.
0:42.1	That's Washington Governor Jay Inslee speaking with reporter and frontline
0:46.4	correspondent Miles O'Brien. It was not a shock. It was extremely
0:50.7	disappointing and disheartening downplaying what was an emerging problem
0:55.1	that could only be explained by someone who had their eye on the
0:58.4	on the Dow Jones rather than eye on the epidemiological curve.
1:02.6	Miles has been reporting from Seattle where the first known case of COVID-19
1:06.7	was identified in the US and he's been following the ongoing tensions
1:11.1	between the governor and the president over the response to the outbreak.
1:15.6	So you know you kind of go down the list and almost everything that
1:19.0	Inslee sees as important Trump sees it the other way and this is this goes for
1:24.0	other governors as well. I'm Rainier Ensign, Executive Producer of Frontline
1:29.2	and this is the frontline dispatch.
1:36.9	The frontline dispatch is made possible by the Abrams Foundation
1:40.3	committed to excellence in journalism and by the WGBH Catalyst Fund.
	...

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