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Coronavirus News: Governor Cuomo fires back after President Trump tweets criticisms during briefing

ByEyewitness News WABC logo

Friday, April 17, 2020

Governor Cuomo responds to President Trump's tweets

Governor Cuomo said the state response was based on the CDC and White House projections.

NEW YORK (WABC) -- As New York Governor Andrew Cuomo held his daily briefing, President Donald Trump was watching and tweeting.

Governor Cuomo in the middle of the presser and seemingly unaware of the criticism was asked by a reporter to respond to those tweets after reading them to him.

"First of all, if he's sitting home watching TV, maybe he should get up and go to work, right?" Cuomo said. "Second, the, let's keep emotion and politics out of this and personal ego, if we can."

Cuomo said Trump was "disrespectful" in dismissing the 800 people who were patients at the Javits Center and pointed out the federal government agreed with the need for hospital beds - and New York's projection for ventilators was based on Trump's and the CDC's projections.

As far as not saying "Thank you" for the president's help, Cuomo said he had thanked the president on television several times, but said again that the federal government had been "very helpful" and that he had "said thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you," he added, "What am I supposed to do, send a bouquet of flowers?"

After a lengthy response in which the governor pulled up the original projections released by The White House and CDC, he said that the number of hospital beds was based on those numbers. He suggested that instead of criticizing him, the president should focus on how fortunately those numbers never came to be due to the social distancing measures put in place.

President Trump also attacked former President Barack Obama and Vice President Biden over their handling of H1N1.

Then he followed up with another tweet calling Governor Cuomo's request for 40,000 ventilators "ridiculous."