
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – President Donald Trump says he’s intent on building the nation’s stockpile of ventilators, masks and other equipment to meet future health threats. He says his administration has awarded contracts for nearly 200,000 ventilators and 800,000 N95 respirators and face masks. He says his goal is to produce “everything America needs for ourselves and then export to the world.” Those comments came while he was thanking workers at a medical equipment distributor in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state. They came on a day a federal whistleblower testified before a House panel about repeated efforts to jump-start U.S. production of respirator masks that he says went nowhere.