Corporate Leaders are People, Too.

As usual with “this” General Motors, things just never seem to work out. They said they were going to give us 40,000 much needed Ventilators, “very quickly”. Now they are saying it will only be 6000, in late April, and they want top dollar. Always a mess with Mary B. Invoke “P”.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 27, 2020

I'm not a GM fanboi, but let's look at what they've done:

On March 19, G.M. began collaborating with Ventec, which normally makes about 200 machines a month, to figure out how to make about 10 times as many in that time. Working through the weekend of March 21 and 22, they hurried to find new suppliers that could provide parts in high volumes, said the five people, who asked not to be named because they fear it would further antagonize Mr. Trump.

Over the weekend, G.M. called in workers to clear out the Kokomo plant, which has been idled because of the outbreak, of machinery previously used to make electrical components for cars. Over the next few days, the automaker and Ventec plan to begin setting up an assembly line. G.M. is already taking applications for the hundreds of jobs. “We continue to work around the clock on our efforts with Ventec,” G.M. said in a statement on Sunday night. “We are working as fast as we can to begin production in Kokomo.”

As for Trump's tweet posted above:

G.M. wasn’t negotiating price and other details with the government. Ventec has led the talks with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services about how many ventilators the government would like to buy, and at what price. The automaker has said it will not make a profit on the ventilators it assembles and is only seeking to cover its costs.

I don't care if GM profits from this effort.  I think they should, rightly.  But that's beside the point now.  And I'll skip over the recitation of the timeline and the efforts GM put into setting up to build ventilators (quite a lot, as it turns out), and cut to the chase:

When Mr. Trump lashed out at G.M. on Friday, executives at both companies were stunned. G.M. executives were furious Mr. Trump would attack the company after it had made so much progress in a week and the administration had earlier been supportive of their effort. (The president on Friday also took aim at Ford Motor, writing, “FORD, GET GOING ON VENTILATORS, FAST!!!!!” Ford is helping General Electric’s health care division increase production of its ventilators.)

“What we’ve accomplished in five days is incredible,” Larryson Foltran, who works in a technology support group at G.M., wrote on Facebook, noting he had been working 14 to 18 hours a day. He said that the president’s posts had bothered him “on a deeper level.”

....

But Mr. Trump’s Twitter posts appear to have unnerved other corporate leaders. A person familiar with the Stop the Spread campaign said that several corporate executives who had been willing to contribute to the effort earlier had backed away for fear of ending up becoming targets for Mr. Trump as Ms. Barra had.

At a White House news conference on Sunday, the president struck a different tone. “General Motors is doing a fantastic job,” Mr. Trump said. “I don’t think we have to worry about General Motors now.”

Well, until he decides GM is making him look bad now; or otherwise gets a FoxNews/OAN bee in his bonnet.  This is who we have put in office:  a child who thinks everything is about him.  Even GM is trying to do good for people who need help.  Are they profiting, or just selling at cost?  Who cares?  What is Trump doing?  NOTHING!  He hasn't invoked the DPA yet, he hasn't made any arrangements with GM even though he's the head of the Administration; he's done nothing but attack GM baselessly, and make other companies reconsider whether they want to get spattered with Trump's shit.

Trump is a danger to the populace at large.  There's no other way to understand it.