War of the Words: Trump rips Cuomo, Cuomo fires back over COVID-19 handling

Fast Facts:

• Gov. Cuomo fires back at the president after Trump trolls Cuomo”™s news conference telling him to stop talking and get back to work

• The governor quotes A.J. Parkinson: “Don”™t pass the bucks without passing the bucks!”

• Saying “We need a fully synchronized, statewide testing process,” the governor will issue an executive order directing all public and private labs in the state to coordinate with the Health Department to “ensure prioritizing of diagnostic testing for public health and restarting the economy.”

• Total hospitalizations continued to decline statewide

• 630 deaths from COVID-19 were reported yesterday

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo today ripped apart President Trump for his handling of the COVID-19 crisis, his administration’s policies as the pandemic unfolded, his failure to financially support states that were devastated by the virus and more in response to a Twitter salvo against Cuomo by Trump.

At an Albany news conference, Cuomo thanked Trump for his help in building the overflow hospital facility at the Javits Center and sending the hospital ship Comfort to New York and then proceeded to expose what he said are falsehoods perpetrated by Trump along with Trump’s failure to understand what experts in his administration were trying to tell him about the danger this country was facing.

This followed more gentle criticism of the administration’s plan for reopening the U.S. economy that was announced yesterday, not because of the proposed time line that could see some state governors allowing business as normal immediately, but because it does not address the fundamental safety issue of testing to determine who has COVID-19 and can spread it and who doesn’t have the virus and, therefore, doesn’t pose a threat.

Cuomo also slammed Trump personally as well as his policies and handling of the pandemic in response to a Tweet by the president that personally criticized Cuomo. Trump sent the Tweet while Cuomo’s televised news conference was in progress. While presuming that Trump had been watching, Cuomo suggested that the president stop watching television and go to work.

Trump’s Twitter statements from today said, “Governor Cuomo should spend more time ‘doing’ and less time ‘complaining’. Get out there and get the job done. Stop talking! We built you thousands of hospital beds that you didn”™t need or use, gave large numbers of Ventilators that you should have had, and helped you with……..testing that you should be doing. We have given New York far more money, help and equipment than any other state, by far, & these great men & women who did the job never hear you say thanks. Your numbers are not good. Less talk and more action.”

Cuomo said Trump is wrong when he said that the Javits Center was not used, pointing out that about 800 patients were treated so far at the temporary facility built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He said he has publicly thanked Trump and those who worked to help New York on numerous occasions and suggested tongue-in-cheek that maybe he needs to send flowers to Trump.

“To dismiss 800 people is disrespectful,” Cuomo said. “If he didn’t really believe 2,500 beds (at Javits) was necessary I don’t believe the federal government would have helped build 2,500 beds. And, the number came from a projection from him. Him. So he should read the reports he issues. The White House Coronavirus Task Force had … projected in the millions of people. The CDC, which is the president, projected in the millions of people. So, the projections were high. They were the president’s projections. So for him to say to anyone, ‘Well you relied on projections and the projections were wrong,’ they’re your projections, Mr. President. So, were we foolish for relying on your projections, Mr. President?”

Cuomo said that even though Trump said 11 times that he was not going to help the states with testing, Cuomo said the reality is that the federal government needs to be a partner in establising a workable testing program.

“He wants to say, ‘I did enough.’ None of us have done enough because it’s not over. We have a lot more to do. And no one can take the posture, ‘Well just say thank you for what I’ve done and I’m out. I’m not doing anything else,’” Cuomo said.

Cuomo slammed Trump for wanting to take an authoritarian position that only he has the power to reopen the economy and then reversing himself to say he has the authority to grant the governors of states the authority to make reopening decisions.

“It was always up to the states,” Cuomo said. “What are you going to grant me, what the Constitution gave me before you were born? It’s called the Tenth Amendment. I don’t need the president of the United States to tell me that I’m the governor and I didn’t need the president of the United States to tell me the powers of a state. People did that. Alexander Hamilton. Thomas Jefferson. James Madison. They are the ones who gave me the power and I don’t need the president of the United States to read the Constitution for me. Maybe he should have read the Constitution before he said he had the power to open the states.”

Cuomo said that Trump is creating the same chaos with making decisions on reopening as he created with medical supplies. He also slammed the administration for financially bailing out big businesses such as airlines without providing adequate recovery money for the states, including funding for responsibilities such as testing that Trump wants to make the states responsible for.

Cuomo said the Trump administration dumps the matter of testing in the laps of the states without offering federal help or federal funding that Cuomo sees as vital to creating an effective testing program. Cuomo pointed to the National Governors Association, which on a bipartisan basis requested $500 billion in funding for the states from the federal government.

The plan outlined at a White House briefing yesterday said the federal government recommends that states follow three phases for reopening, with a two-week period between the implementation of each phase in order to allow monitoring and testing to make sure there is a continual decline in the number of COVID cases. The decisions and responsibility for any testing would be up to the states, the administration said.

Cuomo credited the response of citizens for flattening the growth curve of the outbreak in New York.

“They flattened the curve. Nobody else. No government agency.  No public health expert. Peoples’ actions flattened the curve. We responded to the crisis,” Cuomo said. “So now we’re moving into this reopening phase. How do you plan the reopening? Nobody’s ever done this before. And how do you plan the reopening of the economy and at the same time be cognizant of the public health crisis that you’re still in?”

Cuomo said that there is no testing program right now that can be ramped up to do the volume that will be required to safely reopen the country’s economy. He classified the testing capability of public health departments as well as the private sector as “de minimus.”

Cuomo drew a parallel between the hospital capacity crisis that existed when the outbreak started in the U.S. to the need for a testing program that will keep the reopening process safe and help guard against a fresh wave of cases and deaths. Cuomo pointed out that materials needed for test kits typically come from China.

“The federal government has to be part of this approach and part of this answer,” Cuomo said. “The federal government cannot wipe their hands of this and say the states are responsible for testing.”

Cuomo and state Commissioner of Health Howard Zucker responded to questions about the populations of nursing homes and assisted living facilities being hard hit by the virus by saying that the state is watching the situation closely and promoting best practices to protect residents of those facilities. They did not recommend that residents of those facilities be moved elsewhere at the present time.

Cuomo reported that yesterday there were another 630 deaths from COVID-19 in New York state, with 590 in hospitals and 40 in nursing homes. That raises the total to 12,822 deaths in New York. He indicated that the rate of new hospital admissions remains essentially steady and that the rate of new intensive care unit admissions and intubations provides more hope that the outbreak has hit a plateau.