iStock(NEW YORK) — New York Rep. Max Rose joined The View Monday after returning from a two-week deployment with the National Guard where he set up an emergency hospital in New York City.
“I served alongside doctors who, you know, had lost family, whose family was sick and they were still soldiering on. Nurses who hadn’t had the opportunity to hug their children in weeks,” Rose told “The View.” “These are the soldiers in this new war… People aren’t thinking about political differences. They aren’t thinking about divides. They’re just getting the job done. It gives you all the faith that you need in this country that we’re going to beat this virus.”
During the two weeks, Rose worked as an operations officer helping to set up a 262-bed emergency hospital at the South Beach psychiatric center in Staten Island. Rose currently serves as a captain in the National Guard and previously served as a U.S. Army officer on active duty in Afghanistan, where he earned a Bronze Star, Purple Heart and Combat Infantry Badge.
“There’s another element of war that I think is even more important right now, and that is the solidarity… [People] are thinking about ways in which we can unite,” he said. “That’s what makes this the greatest country in the history of the world. It’s how we sent man to the moon, won World War II, won the Cold War, and it’s how we’re going to beat this.”
Rose likened the fight against the coronavirus to World War II, saying that it is a “total war” where the U.S. must “utilize [its] full manufacturing capacity.”
He called on President Donald Trump to step up federal intervention and “utilize the full powers available to him as commander in chief.”
“This requires the president to step in, assert all the powers underlying the Defense Production Act,” he said. “It does boil down to the simple fact that the free market alone won’t solve this problem.”
“There is a clear role that the federal government has got to play… There are certain things that only the federal government can get done, and with presidential leadership, and that’s centered around production of these critical supplies that we need,” he added. “The [personal protective equipment] to protect our medical professionals, the lab equipment, the swabs. We need millions upon millions of these items so we can ramp up testing, ramp up antibody testing, do the contact tracing so we can open up this economy.”
While Rose leveled criticism against the Chinese government and the World Health Organization, he also warned against overly zealous attacks on both parties.
“It’s clear that [the Chinese government] could have done far more, and it’s becoming increasingly more likely that they’re not being honest about the sources of this deadly virus originating and spreading throughout the world,” Rose said. “But with that being said, we cannot let our criticisms of China bleed into rampant xenophobia and bias toward Chinese Americans and violence toward Chinese Americans… They are Americans and patriots just like all of us.”
“The other thing that we can’t do right now is just completely retreat away from the world and be isolationists,” Rose added. “The World Health Organization made some egregious mistakes, but that’s cause for us to take even more of a leadership role [and] reform the institution. If we isolate, we will forget about the fact … this is a global problem. This virus doesn’t see borders… We have to have a global solution.”
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