Andrew Cuomo Finally Rips On Trump: 'Didn't You Read Your Own Projections?'

By Aliza Worthington — April 17, 2020

I can't be the only one who was wondering when Gov. Cuomo's patience with Trump was going to run out. Now we know - it was today. Early on in the question and answer section after his daily COVID-19 briefing, a reporter read him a tweet Trump sent, apparently during the briefing, and in response to it. She read it to him, and asked for his response.

Gov. Cuomo all but rolled up his sleeves and said, "It's go time." He held back just a smidge, though, and instead said — as if he were speaking to a very intellectually impaired and very nasty child, which is actually what Trump is — "A'right. Good. Let's respond to the president."

REPORTER: He tweeted 13 minutes ago, quote, "Governor Cuomo should spend more time doing and less time complaining. Get out there and get the job done. Stop talking. We built you thousands of hospital beds that you didn't need or use, gave large numbers of ventilators that you should have had and helped you with testing that you should be doing." It goes on a little bit more. So wondering if you could respond to that and also the question about the overwhelmed ICU.

GOV. CUOMO: Good. Let's respond to the president. First of all, if he's sitting home watching tv, maybe he should get up and go to work, right? Second, let's keep emotion and politics out of this, and personal ego if we can. Because this is about the people. And it's about our job. And let's try to focus on that. I have said repeatedly that when we were fighting for the additional capacity for a hospital system that the president moved very quickly and I applauded him for it. He brought the Army Corps of Engineers to build the Javits Center to capacity, 2,500 beds. He's wrong that it hasn't been used. About 800 people have gone through Javits. To dismiss 800 people is disrespectful. But we didn't use 2,500 beds because we didn't reach the capacity.
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And the number came from a projection from him. Him. See, he should read the reports he issues. The White House Coronavirus Task Force had enormous -- projected in the millions of people. The CDC, which is the president, projected in the millions of people. So the projections were high. They were the president's projections. So for him to say that anyone, "Well, you relied on projections and the projections were wrong," they're YOUR projections, Mr. President. So were we foolish for relying on your projections, Mr. President?

As if all that glorious calling out wasn't enough, Gov. Cuomo went on for another 5 minutes absolutely tap dancing on Trump's head about his appalling ignorance, and his abhorrence of integrity.

GOV. CUOMO: And then the only thing he's doing, let's be honest, well, its it's up to the states to do reopen. It was always up to the states. What, are you are going to grant me what the Constitution granted me before you were born? It's called the 10th amendment. And I didn't need the president of the United States to tell me that I'm governor. And I didn't need the president of the United States to tell me the powers of a state. People did that. Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison. They are the ones who gave me the power. And I don't need the president of the United States to read the Constitution for me. Maybe HE should have read the Constitution before he said he had the power to open the states. Where he did the very graceful 180, and people allowed him to do a graceful 180.

Ouch. Sounds like Gov. Cuomo is fed up with the media, too. Can't blame him. They are giving Trump hours of free airtime so he can rant and misinform and abuse them with little or no pushback. It's more than embarrassing. It's dangerous.

He ends with more receipts about how unprepared — really, criminally unprepared — Trump's own administration was for this pandemic to hit.

GOV. CUOMO: By the way, I needed a stockpile? Where was your stockpile? 10,000 ventilators for the nation? THAT was your stockpile?
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You know how many hospital beds we have in this nation? 900,000. His projection says 2.4 million hospital beds, the whole hospital system is only 900. And his stockpile has 10,000 ventilators. You were ready with your stockpile? Didn't you read your own CDC projection? Didn't you read your own coronavirus projection?

So thank you again, Mr. President, for the Javits. Thank you for the U.S. Navy ship "Comfort." Which by the way is just doing your job as president, it's not really like, "Thank you," like you wrote a check yourself, but thank you for that.

SERIOUSLY. Trump is doing everything he can to sabotage the response of this nation to a global pandemic, and he wants Gov. Cuomo to THANK him? For f*cking WHAT? Doing his JOB? The few times he does what he's supposed to?

Cuomo quipped, "I don't know what, am I supposed to do, send a bouquet of flowers?"

If he did, I would love to see the note he'd write with them.