Trump Suggests a NY Hospital Is Losing Masks Because of Crime

President Donald Trump alleged a New York hospital is losing medical masks or even allowing them to be stolen, questioning how demand for the product could have spiked so rapidly during the coronavirus outbreak.

Trump cited no evidence and didn’t identify the hospital. At a news conference Sunday in the White House Rose Garden, after the chief executive officer of medical distributor Owens & Minor Inc. said that one of its customers had gone from using 10,000 to 20,000 masks a week to 200,000 to 300,000, the president suggested a criminal reason.

“How do you go from 10 to 20, to 300,000 -- 10 to 20,000 masks to 300,000, even though this is different. Something’s going on, and you ought to look into it, as reporters,” Trump said.

“Where are the masks going -- are they going out the backdoor?” he added. “Somebody should probably look into that, because I just don’t see from a practical standpoint how that’s possible to go from that to that, and we have that happening in numerous places.”