ALBANY – Governor Andrew Cuomo went off on President Trump during the governor’ daily COVID-19 briefing on Friday after President Donald Trump tweeted that Cuomo should work more and talk less.
That set off Cuomo to lace into Trump for several minutes criticizing the president for suggesting New York did not need the amount of personal protective equipment and ventilates as the governor claimed weeks ago. While the PPE was and still is in high demand, the stated needed fewer ventilators than projected.
Those projections, Cuomo noted, were White House projections and he said if Trump wanted to place blame, he should fire the CDC director and the White House COVID-19 task force.
Cuomo noted his call for more hospital beds, converting the Javits Center in Manhattan into a hospital, and asking the president to deploy the USNS hospital ship Comfort to New York were based on White House projections. And he noted he thanked Trump for that aid repeatedly. “Maybe I should send him a bouquet of flowers.”
Cuomo said the states now need a federal system of testing for the virus with the funding to pay for it.
