CNN host Jake Tapper confronted New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio for blasting President Trump’s response to the coronavirus while dodging personal criticisms.
As recently as March 13, de Blasio was urging New Yorkers to go about their lives normally despite the severe coronavirus outbreak in the United States. When Tapper asked him about his nonchalant response to the virus on Sunday, de Blasio urged people to focus on the present situation.
“This was a very different world just a short time ago. But the bottom line is, none of us have time to look backwards. I’m trying to figure out how we get through to Sunday, next Sunday, and then what we do the week after that. And that’s the only thing we should be talking about in this country,” de Blasio explained.
He added, “And by the way, any other place in this country that thinks this is just gonna pass them by and is gonna be a nonissue, it’s in all 50 states now. And what we’re all learning at the front line is this moves very, very fast, in a way none of us have ever experienced in our lives.”
Tapper pushed back, asking, “Mr. Mayor, you say you don’t think you should look backwards, but you’ve criticized President Trump for, quote, ‘actions that are far, far behind the curve.’ I mean, Mr. Mayor, weren’t your actions in this outbreak also far, far behind the curve?”
De Blasio responded, “Jake, I in real-time said, and this was weeks and weeks ago as it was happening, that we were not being given the testing we needed. I think the big historical point here that will be looked back on is, if this country had had the testing when we needed it, this could have been a very different reality. But there’s no time to go back over that.”
As of Sunday morning, New York had more than 52,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 728 related deaths.
