NEW YORK CITY — Gov. Andrew Cuomo and President Donald Trump rekindled their socially distanced spat Friday, with the president live-tweeting insults during the governor’s briefing and Cuomo providing on-air retorts.
“Governor Cuomo should spend more time ‘doing’ and less time ‘complaining,'” the president of the United States tweeted.
“Stop talking! We built you thousands of hospital beds that you didn’t need or use.”
“He’s doing nothing,” Cuomo retorted. “If he’s sitting home watching TV, maybe he should get up and go to work.”
Trump’s Twitter tirade appeared as Cuomo announced an executive order mandating that all New York labs prioritize new coronavirus testing but warned he could do little without funding and supplies from the federal government.
When a reporter informed Cuomo of Trump’s response, the New York governor launched into a minutes-long tirade accusing the president of incompetence and a gluttonous appetite for gratitude.
“What am I supposed to do, send a bouquet of flowers?” Cuomo said. “Thank you again for Javits … but it’s not like you wrote the check yourself.”
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Trump has repeatedly accused New York officials of inflating numbers to secure aid the state did not need, noting that just 800 patients have gone through the federal 2,500-bed built within Manhattan’s Javits Center.
Cuomo lowered his voice to a whisper when he pointed out New York’s projections relied on data from Trump’s own Centers For Disease Control and Prevention.
“We listened to you, Mr. President,” Cuomo said. “Read your own report.”
The order that spurred the virtual-back-and-forth mandates that New York’s 301 public and private labs coordinate on the mass-testing initiative Cuomo says must be up and running before he can open the economy.
But the state lacks chemicals necessary to perform virology testing and that can only be procured in China, which Cuomo also argued should be the federal government’s responsibility.
“The state governments have gotten zero, zilch, nada in federal aid,” Cuomo said. “We need to fund the states because the states are the ones who are doing this.”
Data released Friday shows COVID-19 is still spreading too rapidly to consider relaunching the economy, Cuomo said.
Read More: NY Coronavirus Stay-In-Place Order Extended To May 15
New York lost 630 people to COVID-19 on Thursday and a total of 4,195 lives lost since April 11, Cuomo said.
Hospitalization rates remained steady at about 2,000 COVID-19 hospitalizations per day.
“This is mayhem,” Cuomo said. “We can’t fund all these extraordinary efforts we’re undertaking.”
Coronavirus In NYC: Latest Happenings And Guidance
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