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Trump Sees Off Naval Hospital Ship in Virginia, Going Against Travel Warnings Trump Warns He May Quarantine New York and Other States to Stop Virus
(about 5 hours later)
WASHINGTON — Standing in front of a Navy hospital ship, with a row of American flags arranged behind him, President Trump on Saturday expressed support for New York even as he announced he was considering a quarantine for the tristate region. WASHINGTON — President Trump said on Saturday that he might order a quarantine of New York, New Jersey and parts of Connecticut, a drastic exercise of federal power that would further restrict travel by millions of Americans to prevent them from carrying the coronavirus to other parts of the country.
“We’re here for you,” Mr. Trump said, speaking from the naval station in Norfolk, Va., where he traveled to see off the Comfort as it deployed to New York, where it will help a state struggling to handle an influx of coronavirus patients by adding 1,000 hospital beds to a system in short supply. Mr. Trump offered no details about how his administration would enforce a ban on movements in and out of three northeastern states, including the country’s most populous city, though he said it would not prevent truckers from making deliveries from outside the area and would not affect trade with the three states “in any way.”
Mr. Trump trumpeted the departure of the hospital ship, saying that it would play a “critical role” in freeing up capacity at area hospitals. In reality, however, the arrival of the Comfort will help the struggling state only on the margins. New York estimates it will need a total of 140,000 beds to treat patients who are ill with Covid-19, and it has about 53,000 beds during normal times. Speaking to reporters before traveling to Norfolk, Va., to see off the Navy’s Comfort ship as it deployed to New York to bolster hospital capacity, Mr. Trump said that New York and the other states had become a “hot spot” and that infected New Yorkers had been carrying the pathogen to Florida.
“You have the unwavering support of the entire nation, the entire government and the entire American people,” Mr. Trump said, even as he weighed whether to close off the region in a move that Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York immediately described as unworkable while questioning whether it was even legally enforceable. “There is a possibility that sometime today we’ll do a quarantine, short term, two weeks, on New York, probably New Jersey, certain parts of Connecticut,” said Mr. Trump, a former New Yorker who now is officially a Florida resident. “They’re having problems down in Florida. A lot of New Yorkers going down, we don’t want that, heavily infected.”
The 200-mile trip to the naval base was Mr. Trump’s first time leaving the White House in nine days, and his decision to turn the moment into a high-profile photo opportunity raised questions about safety and his use of government resources at a time when the administration’s own federal guidelines advise against most travel and gatherings of more than 10 people. The president’s musing about a quarantine was the latest example of how he has lurched from one public message to another as his administration struggles to slow the spread of a deadly pandemic, prevent large-scale deaths and minimize the long-term damage to the nation's economy and way of life.
“We don’t need Donald Trump in Virginia doing a photo op,” Terry McAuliffe, the former Democratic governor of Virginia, said in an interview. “We need respirators and we need masks, like every other state in the country. He ought to be staying in Washington, in his job. It’s a total waste of time.” Mr. McAuliffe said that a presidential visit to a naval base meant that officials who needed to be addressing a public health crisis had to instead “spend their time doing a Trump re-election photo op. He ought to stop the politicking and lead the nation.” Just days earlier, Mr. Trump had repeatedly defied the recommendations of his own public health experts by insisting that he wanted to lift social distancing restrictions so that large parts of the country could return to work, perhaps as early as April 12. But on Saturday, the president veered in the other direction, suggesting that even more stringent restrictions, like a quarantine, were necessary to slow the spread of the virus.
Mr. Trump delivered his speech in front of a small audience of about a dozen military officials, as well as a handful of White House aides who traveled with him. But the pared-down event was filled with pageantry. The president arrived to the tune of “Hail to the Chief.” He spoke behind a podium with a presidential seal, and when he was finished, he stood next to the Defense Secretary, Mark T. Esper, and saluted the ship as it pushed off from the pier. “I’d rather not do it, but we may need it,” Mr. Trump said of a quarantine.
On Friday, Mr. Trump defended his decision to see off the ship as a patriotic show of support. “I have spirit for the country,” the president said at a news conference. “I’m not going to be jumping around in a huddle.” The idea comes as the White House’s two-week national coronavirus guidelines — including recommendations to work from home, avoid discretionary travel and limit gatherings to no more than 10 people — are set to expire on Monday. Mr. Trump has not yet said whether he will extend them.
“It’s like a tiny trip,” he continued. “I think it’s a good thing when I go over there and I say thank you. We’ll be careful.” The suggestion from the president that he might prevent residents of the tristate region from leaving their states surprised top officials.
As he departed the White House on Saturday afternoon under a light rain, Mr. Trump broached the prospect of a two-week quarantine of New York, New Jersey and parts of Connecticut. “I’d rather not do it, but we may need it,” he said. The president said he was considering restricting travel to and from those states “because they’re having problems down in Florida, a lot of New Yorkers going down,” but he did not offer any specifics on how that would work. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York quickly dismissed the idea, calling it “unworkable” and questioned whether the president had the authority to confine vast numbers of Americans in a particular region.
He offered little additional detail during his speech, except to say that any quarantine would “not apply to people such as truckers from outside the New York area who are making deliveries or simply transiting through.” He also noted that “it won’t affect trade in any way.” “I don’t even know what that means,” Mr. Cuomo said during an afternoon briefing in Albany. “I don’t know how that could be legally enforceable. From a medical point of view, I don’t know what you would be accomplishing.” Asked about the proposal on CNN, Mr. Cuomo equated it to “a declaration of war on states” and said the plan stood at odds with the law and the president’s desire to restart the economy. “You would paralyze the financial sector,” he said, saying the stock market would “drop like a stone.”
Mr. Trump was accompanied on the trip to Norfolk by Mr. Esper, as well as his incoming chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president. His national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, and Richard Grenell, the acting director of national intelligence, were also spotted in attendance at his speech. The trip was proposed, an official said, partly because the naval station is self-contained and would not require Mr. Trump to be in public areas, like a commercial airport. Vice President Mike Pence had previously visited the base when the Comfort was in port. Amid the pandemic, the ship’s departure for New York was internally seen at the White House as a reassuring moment for the president to highlight with a personal appearance. Mr. Cuomo said that he and the president had spoken earlier on Saturday about the arrival of the Navy’s hospital ship, but added, “I didn’t speak to him about any quarantine.” Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey also said that he was unfamiliar with what Mr. Trump had suggested, and that it had not come up when the two men talked on Friday. Gov. Ned Lamont of Connecticut said in a statement that he looked forward to discussing the proposal with Mr. Trump “because confusion leads to panic.”
Mr. Trump has been grounded at the White House since March 19, when he visited the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s headquarters. His typical weekend round of golf has been curtailed since the outbreak of the virus in the United States, as have all of his scheduled weekend trips to his private Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla. He has grown increasingly restless confined to the White House complex, where he has watched the economic gains that were intended to serve as the heart of his re-election campaign evaporate. White House officials provided no specific information about the legal basis for a mass quarantine of millions of people and Mark Meadows, the president’s incoming chief of staff, said only that the administration was “evaluating all the options right now.” But pressed on the matter, officials referred reporters to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website titled “Legal Authorities for Isolation and Quarantine.”
Mr. Trump made it clear this week that the visit to the ship could draw publicity. “I’ll kiss it goodbye,” he said. “I suspect the media will be following.” The site asserts that the commerce clause of the Constitution gives the federal government the power to isolate or quarantine people, and that section 361 of the Public Health Service Act authorizes the secretary of health and human services to “take measures to prevent the entry and spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the United States and between states.”
The 894-foot ship, which is expected to arrive on Monday in New York Harbor, was in port in Norfolk undergoing repairs when the Pentagon offered it to help in the response to the pandemic. The ship is expected to take on patients in New York with other illnesses to let hospitals focus on the large number of coronavirus cases, the president said. That is in part because emergency patients who are medically fragile need to be kept apart from wards where the coronavirus could be circulating. And keeping patients ill with the coronavirus off the ship is necessary because large, oceangoing vessels can easily act as incubators for infectious diseases. Military vessels, in particular, have virtually no windows on their lower decks and rely on enormous ventilation systems that might spread the virus. Existing regulations indicate that in the event of a federal quarantine, “no such individual shall travel in interstate traffic or from one state or U.S. territory to another without a written travel permit issued by” the director of the C.D.C. or someone acting on his behalf.
Mr. Trump announced this week that the ship would arrive in New York weeks earlier than originally expected. But Leila Barraza, an assistant professor of public health at the University of Arizona, said an attempt by the federal government to restrict travel between states was likely to be challenged in court, especially if the president had not tried less draconian measures first.
The Comfort is no stranger to New York. The ship was dispatched to Manhattan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It also served off the coast of Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm and was on hand for aid in 1994 during the rescue of Cuban and Haitian migrants. More recently, the ship was deployed to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in 2017. “There has to be a compelling interest for imposing interstate travel restrictions, and they have to be the least restrictive possible,” she said.
Donald G. McNeil Jr. contributed reporting from New York. The purpose of a quarantine would be to prevent the spread of a deadly pathogen. But medical experts were split on Saturday about whether such an action would help in the current situation, when the coronavirus has already spread widely around the country. As of Saturday, the United States had more than 119,000 known cases of the virus, with infected patients in all 50 states and Washington, D.C.
Other countries, including India, have embraced severe lockdowns of their citizens, including limits on travel, in an effort to try to prevent the spread of the virus, something that some public health experts said could still be effective in the United States.
But Dr. Amesh Adalja, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, countered that Mr. Trump’s comments on a possible quarantine would provide little benefit, given that much of the region is already under fairly strict stay-at-home measures, and might cause people to flee the city, spreading the virus more quickly.
“Just seeing the breaking news alerts on their phones will cause people to leave the city,” Dr. Adalja said. “It could end up creating more flight from New York and more chains of transmission.”
That is just what happened in China after the mayor of Wuhan, where the virus first emerged, began speculating about the possibility of closing his city to keep the virus from spreading to the rest of the country.
Panicked residents of the city — many of whom were already planning to leave for the Lunar New Year holiday — fled. Five million people from Wuhan escaped before air, train, bus and road traffic was finally firmly shut on Jan. 23. Their travel to other parts of the country seeded new outbreaks all over China.
Public health officials around the country have criticized Mr. Trump and his administration for failing to move quickly enough to provide diagnostic testing that could have helped track the spread of the virus earlier. Governors and mayors have pleaded with the president to do more to help them acquire protective gear like masks and ventilators for emergency medical workers, nurses and doctors.
The specter of a federal quarantine came after a wave of governors who, fearful about the virus spreading further through their states, ordered people who had traveled from New York to isolate themselves for two weeks after their arrivals. Gov. Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island said Friday that state troopers would begin stopping drivers with New York license plates so that National Guard officials could collect contact information and inform anyone coming from the state that they were subject to a mandatory, 14-day quarantine.
Mr. Trump floated the idea of a quarantine even as he left the White House for the first time in more than a week to travel to a naval base in Norfolk so he could trumpet the departure of the 894-foot hospital ship, saying that its 1,000 beds would play a “critical role” in freeing up capacity at area hospitals.
In reality, however, the arrival of the Comfort will help the struggling state only on the margins. New York estimates it will need a total of 140,000 beds to treat patients who are ill with the disease caused by the coronavirus, and it has about 53,000 beds during normal times.
“You have the unwavering support of the entire nation, the entire government and the entire American people,” Mr. Trump said.
The president’s decision to turn the trip to the base into a high-profile photo opportunity raised questions about safety and his use of government resources at a time when the administration’s own guidelines advise against most travel and gatherings of more than 10 people.
“We don’t need Donald Trump in Virginia doing a photo op,” Terry McAuliffe, the former Democratic governor of Virginia, said in an interview. “He ought to be staying in Washington, in his job. It’s a total waste of time.”
Mr. Trump delivered his speech in front of a small audience of about a dozen military officials, as well as a handful of White House aides who traveled with him. The ship is expected to take on patients in New York with other illnesses to let hospitals focus on the large number of coronavirus cases, the president said.
A White House official said the trip was proposed partly because the naval station is self-contained and would not require Mr. Trump to be in public areas like a commercial airport.
“It’s like a tiny trip,” Mr. Trump said on Friday, defending his decision to go. “I think it’s a good thing when I go over there and I say thank you. We’ll be careful.”
Charlie Savage contributed reporting from Washington, and Andrew Jacobs, Donald G. McNeil Jr. and Jesse McKinley from New York.