Democratic Rep. Max Rose signaled he would be OK with President Trump winning his reelection bid if it meant that the country beat the coronavirus pandemic.
“Nothing would make me happier, nothing, than to see this president utilize all the tools at his disposal to win this war as the commander in chief that he is, and to own that success,” Rose, a freshman congressman, explained in an interview with Politico. “And if that success means that we beat COVID and he wins reelection, then so be it. God bless him. Because we have won the greatest battle of the 21st century.”
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Rose noted that in his eyes, however, the president and his administration had not done everything in its power to help combat the spread of the coronavirus.
“But I have not seen his administration assert its authority in the ways that it could,” he said, before bringing up the federal government’s response during World War II.
“Think back again to the analogy of World War II,” Rose explained. “We built factories and then mandated that the private sector take them over. We put people to work in terms of wartime jobs. That wasn’t just the patriotic thing to do. That was absolutely vital because people needed work. And we very well might find ourselves in that situation again.”
He also explained where he thought the president was coming up short. “One: streamlining who’s in charge,” he said. “There’s too many task forces going on. Second thing is he needs to assert all of his Defense Production Act authority over the production and dissemination of critical supplies, from ventilators to masks to reagents to all of the equipment necessary to test people or the virus. The third thing is I believe that he should be asserting or utilizing the Pentagon supply management acumen for the dissemination of these critical supplies within the country.”
Regarding his own campaign, Rose said, “Let me be very clear. I don’t give a f— about politics right now. That includes my own campaign. But it remains to be seen what a campaign looks like, and how a campaign can be executed faithfully.”
Rose represents New York’s 11th Congressional District, which comprises Staten Island and Brooklyn. The district is rated by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report as a toss-up for the 2020 election.
