[Actually, Pence contradicted Trump yesterday. Trump was telling the media that ventilators are complex, computerized machines. Pence got up there right after that and told them the machines are really kind of simple. Trump noticed too.]
I heard Dr. Dave Janda say yesterday that the constraining component on the manufacture of ventilators is a computer board from China. I guess that’s not too surprising.
I imagine more primitive ones could be put together in a pinch, but I am not so sure that’d be the direction we’d be going.
And likely both Trump and Pence are correct: relatively simple to put together if you have the components. (Or if you go primitive.)