New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said President Trump needs to “stop the politics” in dealing with the coronavirus outbreak.
“New York is the canary in the coal mine, you’re going to see this moving across the country,” the Democrat said Monday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “Anyone who wants to say this is New York alone, that’s a political, partisan, divisive view, and it’s exactly wrong.”
Co-host Joe Scarborough asked Cuomo “what plea” he had for Trump.
“Joe, my plea is, and pardon me if I’m a little emotional, but I’ve been living with this 24 hours a day and I’m seeing people die all around me,” Cuomo said. “The science people, the government professionals have to stand up and look the president in the eye and say, ‘This is not a political exercise. This is not press relations. It’s not optics. The tsunami is coming. We know it is.'”
It hasn’t been all animosity between Trump and Cuomo during the coronavirus pandemic. Last week, the New York governor praised the president and said he was doing “well” in leveraging the Defense Production Act. A day earlier, the pair exchanged criticism over each other’s handling of the coronavirus crisis.
New York, which has seen at least 790 deaths associated with the illness, has become a major hot spot for the COVID-19 virus in the United States. An overwhelming majority of New Yorkers approve of how Cuomo is handling the coronavirus pandemic, according to a poll released on Monday.
Trump said on Sunday he expects the virus to peak in the country in two weeks.
