Never one to mince words, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo once again went on the attack against President Donald Trump on Tuesday and claimed the commander-in-chief was responsible for every single COVID-19-related death in the Empire State.
Those comments came a day after the president on Twitter criticized Cuomo for his “tremendously poor leadership” skills during the pandemic. The tweets also criticized the book the governor recently published on the crisis, as well as his younger brother, Chris, who is a CNN anchor.
Governor Cuomo has shown tremendously poor leadership skills in running N.Y. Bad time for him to be writing and promoting a book, especially since he has done such a poor job with Covid and Crime. So many unnecessary deaths. The City & State have sunk to historic lows…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 19, 2020
“So many unnecessary deaths,” Trump tweeted. “The City & State have sunk to historic lows…”
Andrew Cuomo spent nearly 12 minutes of his 49-minute briefing with reporters Tuesday railing on Trump and his treatment of New York.
“He lied, and in combination with his lies, he was incompetent,” Cuomo told reporters Tuesday. “It was his lie that said, this was nothing to worry about. This was a hoax. It would be gone by Easter.”
According to Snopes.com, the claim that Trump called COVID-19 “a hoax,” is not entirely correct. Back in February during a rally in South Carolina, he called Democrats’ attacks on his handling of the coronavirus “their new hoax,” a word he also used about Democrats impeachment activities.
Cuomo cited conversations Trump had with author and journalist Bob Woodward that he preferred to play down the virus in public for fear of creating a panic.
While New York was the first major COVID-19 hot spot in the US back in March and April, three other states, California, Texas and Florida, have surpassed the New York in total number of cases. That’s according to statistics from Johns Hopkins University of Medicine Coronavirus Research Center. However, each of those states still only have about half the death toll when compared to New York’s 33,366, the vast majority of which happened at the beginning of the crisis.
“Trump was patient zero in the United States for COVID. Trump is the number one super spreader, not just for the Rose Garden,” said Cuomo, referring to the announcement earlier this month of Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination, an event where several people attended and contracted the virus. “He is the super spreader that brought the virus to America.”
The governor himself has been criticized for policies that may have escalated the death toll, such as mandating nursing homes admit patients who had contracted the virus. A policy that was in effect from March 25 to May 10.
State officials have claimed about 6,700 nursing home deaths, although lawmakers in both Albany and Washington, as well as the U.S. Justice Department, want more information on that claim, as the state only counts actual deaths in nursing homes and not residents who eventually died in hospitals.
Cuomo said it was Trump’s incompetence that led to declarations the virus was not spread by asymptomatic people, and the governor has also repeatedly criticized the administration for not shutting down air traffic to and from Europe, which Cuomo insists is how the virus hit the state.
“I hold him attributable for all the deaths in New York state because New York state had that big burst because it came from Europe and not China,” Cuomo said. “They never did a European travel ban (until mid-March) because he was lying to the American people.”
