After Mocking 'King' Trump, Cuomo Says Virus Should Be 'No-Politics Zone'

In a frenzy of television appearances on Tuesday, Cuomo urged the president to avoid being “dictatorial.” He said on CNN that Trump’s coronavirus response had been “schizophrenic.” About 30 minutes later on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” he compared the president’s daily briefings to “a comedy skit,” while saying no governor should watch them because “there’s no value in it.”

Cuomo’s comments were prompted by Trump’s unsubstantiated claim during a White House news conference on Monday evening that he had “total authority” over the states when it came to reopening the economy.

That claim was quickly rebuked by several governors, including Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, a Republican who heads the National Governors Association. But it was Cuomo who used the sharpest language, threatening to undo weeks of diplomacy toward the White House.

Cuomo’s shift in tone comes at a time when New York’s once-urgent need for immediate resources from the federal government has lessened, with many indicators showing a so-called flattening of the curve in the state.

It also followed the introduction of the governor’s new coalition with his counterparts from six neighboring states to draft a plan to reopen the region’s economy — a move that displeased Trump, whose exasperation grew Tuesday after Cuomo’s media appearances.

“Cuomo’s been calling daily, even hourly, begging for everything, most of which should have been the state’s responsibility, such as new hospitals, beds, ventilators, etc.,” the president wrote on Twitter. “I got it all done for him, and everyone else, and now he seems to want Independence! That won’t happen!”

Trump followed up with another post in which, referring to the film “Mutiny on the Bounty,” he compared the governors’ coalition to mutineers turning on their captain.

But given a chance to respond at his daily news briefing later Tuesday morning, Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, held back, repeatedly saying that he did not want to argue with Trump.

“The president was clearly unhappy,” Cuomo said, noting the “Mutiny on the Bounty” tweet and other remarks by Trump, who he said “was clearly spoiling for a fight on this issue.”

But Cuomo said he would not engage further, saying the coronavirus crisis should be a “no-politics zone.”

“The president will have no fight with me,” he said.

The governor said that he still needed the federal government’s help, particularly as the response begins to shift to restoring economic and social activity.

“In this reopening, we could lose all the progress we made in one week,” he said.

Asked why he had criticized the president in his spate of morning television interviews, Cuomo said that he felt it was his duty to correct and rebut the notion that Trump had unfettered power.

Indeed, Cuomo used his briefing to opine on the distinct roles of federal government and states, quoting Alexander Hamilton and citing the principles of the 10th Amendment.

“We don’t have a king in this country; we didn’t want a king,” he said. “So we have a constitution and we elect a president.”

But Cuomo, who served in the federal government as the secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Bill Clinton, also seemed acutely aware of the ability of the federal government to both assist and, potentially, hamstring efforts in New York, even as new coronavirus cases and hospitalizations are starting to ebb.

Cuomo has been successful thus far in securing cooperation from Trump, who the governor has said has “delivered for New York,” a sentiment he echoed on Tuesday.

“He is right: I did call and say I need federal assistance,” Cuomo said, adding, “And I praised him for his actions.”

At the governor’s request, the federal government loosened testing restrictions during the early days of the outbreak, greatly increasing New York’s capacity to test hundreds of thousands of people. It sent thousands of ventilators from the national stockpile to New York.

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Last month, the Navy deployed the USNS Comfort, a 1,000-bed hospital ship to New York City, and the Army Corps of Engineers sent its personnel to retrofit the Javits Center, a gargantuan convention center in midtown Manhattan, into a makeshift hospital with thousands of beds for coronavirus patients.

Many of those federal resources, however, appeared more urgent when state officials were citing worst-case forecasts showing New York would need up to 140,000 hospital beds and 40,000 ventilators at the peak of the outbreak.

Instead, the state’s hospitals have been strained, but not overrun.

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Still, the one-day death toll rose again on Tuesday, to 778, following two days of declining number of deaths, bringing the statewide death toll to 10,834. More than 200,000 people have been infected with the virus in New York.

Cuomo acknowledged the daunting challenges faced in reopening society, including ramping up diagnostic testing, cleaning transportation vehicles, stations and public spaces, and tracing and stomping out new outbreaks.

“There’s a lot to do here,” he says. “The states cannot do this on their own.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .