WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump, who’s taken to calling the U.S. the “king” of ventilators, is making plans to ship 8,000 of the breathing machines to foreign countries by the end of July to help in their fight against the coronavirus.
That's a long way from the early days of the virus when U.S. medical workers were wondering if a shortage of ventilators would force them to make painful decisions about which patients would get them.
Now, the U.S. has a surplus and the president is sharing them with other countries — a goodwill gesture that also helps him offset criticism about his own early response to the pandemic.