Washington (CNN)Senate Democrats grilled Vice President Mike Pence over
coronavirus testing and
President Donald Trump's tweets during a tense phone call Friday afternoon on the pandemic response.
Democratic Senate aide told CNN that "almost every question" from Democratic senators on the call "has been about testing," and said that the administration "has not given clear answers."
The source said that at one point, Sen. Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, said to Pence and everyone on the call, "I have never been so mad about a phone call in my life."
King called the administration's failure to develop a more widespread national testing regime a "dereliction of duty."
Asked why he was frustrated, King told CNN, "The administration should not be off-loading the responsibility for testing onto the states."
"This is an area where national response and coordination is a necessity," King said. "The states don't have the DPA (Defense Production Act) or the other resources of the federal government to oversee and coordinate the testing infrastructure, and yet, adequate testing is the basis of safely reopening the economy."
Hours later, at the daily White House briefing on his administration's coronavirus response, Trump said the federal government will "be sending out 5.5 million testing swabs to the states." The swabs, he said, "can be done easily by the governors themselves. Mostly it's cotton. It's not a big deal, you can get cotton easily, but if they can't get it, we will take care of it."
Pence did not answer the question, the aide said, but instead, "tried to deflect by talking about how they are working respectfully with governors, and Kaine jumped back in to say that those tweets are not at all respectful."
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, according to the aide, closed the call saying that all of the Senate Democrats agreed with what Kaine had just said.
King was the first to "lose it" in a measured way, a source on the call told CNN, who said King was then followed by Kaine. Both came at it from the perspective of two former governors, the source added.
Another person on the call also said it did not go well, adding that the administration has no new plan for testing.
Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland told CNN in an interview that there was "a lot of frustration" on the call.
"There's a big gap between a lot of happy talk from the administration and the realities states are facing every day," he said, "There's just this huge gap ... happy talk doesn't do you any good. Happy talk doesn't get you another N95 mask," he added.
Democrats confront Pence: 'I have never been so mad about a phone call in my life' - CNNPolitics