After Mr. Pence visited Washington State this week to signal the administration’s support for the state, where 14 deaths have been connected to a nursing home in the Seattle area, he praised its governor, Jay Inslee. Mr. Trump then called Mr. Inslee a “snake.”
“Let me just tell you we have a lot of problems with the governor,” Mr. Trump said in Atlanta on Friday. “So Mike may be happy with him, but I’m not, OK?”
Mr. Inslee wrote on Twitter that it was “important for leaders to speak with one voice.”
“I just wish the president and vice president could get on the same page,” he said.
Mr. Trump has also sought to contain public alarm by registering fewer cases of the coronavirus, a decision that public health experts say risks misleading Americans about where the virus has spread. The president said he would prefer not to let 3,533 people on a cruise ship held off the coast of San Francisco to disembark onto American soil, even if they were placed into quarantine, in part because it would inflate the number of American infections. Nineteen crew members and two passengers of the ship have tested positive for the coronavirus.
Two passengers on the ship, Cookie Clark, 76, and her husband, Joe Clark, 81, of Oakdale, Calif., said they had been watching the news constantly and were angry when they heard Mr. Trump say on Friday that he preferred the ship not dock in the United States.
“As American citizens, we have a right to be back on U.S. soil,” Mr. Clark said.
Ms. Clark, a retired realtor, said she was appalled. “We’re just numbers to him,” she said.
Josh Michaud, an associate director for global health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said that it was in the public’s interest to know where cases of the virus were as soon as possible.
“That’s going to be the foundation for developing an effective response. You need to know where the disease is to erect the resources,” Mr. Michaud said. “If you don’t, you’re flying blind.”
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs contributed reporting from New York and Thomas Fuller from San Francisco.