President Trump on Monday ripped Gov. Andrew Cuomo for releasing a book celebrating his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which the state has reported killed 25,659 people.
In a series of tweets, the commander-in-chief said the three-term Democrat had nothing to be proud of and at a rally in Arizona later Monday, lashed him over the Empire State’s COVID-19 nursing home scandal which killed roughly 6,500 elderly New Yorkers.
“Governor Cuomo has shown tremendously poor leadership skills in running N.Y. Bad time for him to be writing and promoting a book, especially since he has done such a poor job with Covid and Crime. So many unnecessary deaths. The City & State have sunk to historic lows,” Trump told his 87 million followers.
Cuomo responded in his own tweet.
“C’mon Donald — you didn’t read my book, everyone knows you don’t read. There are lessons to learn & you still haven’t,” he said, calling the Queens-born president a “super-spreader” and telling him to enjoy his new home state of Florida where the positivity rate is 12 times higher than that of New York.
The war of words came hours after Cuomo on Monday told “Good Morning America” that he wants his own team of in-house experts to review a federally approved COVID-19 vaccine before distributing the drug to millions of New Yorkers, arguing that he doesn’t think the Trump FDA and CDC’s recommendations are “safe.”
At a campaign stop in Prescott, Ariz., the president scolded Cuomo for his remarks, accusing him of trying to “demean” a vaccine for political purposes, and reminded the crowd that it was pharmaceutical companies like Johnson & Johnson, not him, who were responsible for creating one.
“I saw it this morning where a governor who’s done a truly poor — thousands, tens of thousands of people have died in his state. Andrew Cuomo, he’s done a terrible job,” the president said to boos for the Democratic governor from the crowd before lashing into him for the nursing home fatalities.
“Eleven thousand people died in nursing homes. He could have put them in the convention center that I built. We opened up 2,800 beds. We moved the big hospital ship. It was empty, he could have put them there. He put them back in, infected people back in with our elderly population, knowing that our elderly population is susceptible,” he went on, using higher estimates from the Associated Press, which reported that New York was likely undercounting its nursing home deaths.
“He killed thousands and thousands of people,” Trump said.
Writing in his new memoir, “American Crisis,” Cuomo blamed both Republicans and The Post for the controversy surrounding his March 25 edict barring nursing homes from turning away people on the basis of a coronavirus diagnosis.
A silver casket carrying 6,500 copies of the governor’s book — representing the people who have been reported killed by the coronavirus in nursing homes by the state — was wheeled in front of a Brooklyn nursing home on Sunday in protest of his handling of the pandemic.
The president earlier Monday also claimed Cuomo was receiving poor advice from his CNN anchor brother, Chris Cuomo, who he once again called “Fredo” — a taunt which made the younger Cuomo fly into a rage last summer.
“Washington wants nothing to do with him, and that’s so bad for New York, which has become a ghost town. Andrew spends too much time listening to his brother, Fredo. Forget the books and your apology tour. The Federal Government would love to help New York regain its luster!” Trump tweeted.
Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi responded in kind on Twitter, accusing Trump of flushing away his presidency.