President Donald Trump and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D) tenuous coronavirus relationship has soured recently as the pair have taken shots at each other and in a recent press conference, Cuomo declared that Trump was “in denial of the COVID virus from day one.”
In Wednesday’s press conference, Cuomo said, “The buck stops on the president’s desk, that is a fact. That’s what it means to be the President of the United States … in this state, the buck stops on my desk. I am the governor of the state, it stops on my desk.”
Moments later, Cuomo added, “[Trump] was in denial of the COVID virus from day one — it’s just the flu, it’s going to go away, it’s going to be a miracle, it’s not going up, it’s only the testing that is going up — he denied the reality of this situation from day one.”
The governor continued paraphrasing Trump, saying, “Reopen right away, reopen right away, liberate those states, I had all the demonstrations every day, liberate, liberate, liberate, you’re artificially keeping the economy closed, there’s no reason — that came from him.”
Cuomo added, “You don’t defeat reality, denying reality does not defeat reality and he has lived in denial and he has been denying the scientific facts from day one. He has been denying what every health expert in the United States of America was saying.”
Watch the video below:
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo rips into Pres. Trump, says "he was in denial of the COVID virus from day one."
— ABC News (@ABC) July 1, 2020
"Come clean with the American people…At least have the courage to admit what everybody else already knows: you were wrong!" https://t.co/dUxnciaFqZ pic.twitter.com/xqnbeVgbBj
Cuomo also called on Trump to “come clean with the American people, admit the threat of this virus.”
After starting to bring down the cases in the United States, the nation has seen a recent spike in coronavirus cases. Across the country on Tuesday, the cases rose by over 47,000 — the largest one-day spike since the beginning of the pandemic.