Thread: Today’s GAO report on the Trump administration’s inept and dysfunctional effort to distribute ventilators overseas captures in miniature a few of the elements that made Donald Trump’s broader pandemic response such a deadly debacle.

1) After being announced by Trump with great fanfare, there were no clear criteria for determining who should get ventilators.

2) There was no way to keep track of where many ended up.

3) There was improper political interference in allocation decisions typically left to pros.

4) There was no clear or consistent method behind how the Trump people were giving out ventilators.

5) Trump White House officials refused to explain themselves to government watchdogs.

6) Distribution was bizarre, erratic and nonsensical. A country like Sri Lanka, which had three new cases a day, received 200 ventilators while Bangladesh, which had 1,409 daily cases, received 100 of the machines.

7) The U.S. government gave ventilators to countries that would have benefitted far more from simple oxygen delivery or personal protective equipment, which we apparently were not providing.

Ventilators are flashy and grab attention, but they require experts to maintain them.

8) USAID and State now have limited visibility into where the Trump ventilators are now, making it difficult to say whether they have been used appropriately. Some of the expensive machines appear to have just disappeared.

9) USAID rules typically require the govt to monitor whether foreign aid achieves its intended goals, but the Trump team claimed dubiously that their ventilator program was exempt from standard monitoring requirements. So they didn't comply.

The biggest loser: You, the taxpayer.