New York governor hits back at Trump over disparaging comments

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has hit back at a series of presidential tweets accusing him of dramatizing the coronavirus pandemic and not being appreciative of the president's efforts in providing help.

Following Cuomo's complaints about medical shortage in US, President Donald Trump had tweeted that Cuomo “should spend more time ‘doing’ and less time ‘complaining.’”

Trump claimed that the federal government had unnecessarily provided additional ventilators for hospitals and criticized Cuomo for not showing him gratitude.

US coronavirus crisis takes sharp political turn as Trump slams Democratic governors

The US coronavirus crisis took a sharp political turn on Friday as President Donald Trump lashed out at four Democratic governors over their handling of the pandemic.

Cuomo, who has been described by media as a man of “action,” responded that if the president was now watching his televised press event “maybe he should get up and go to work."

The governor said his team had provided all the necessary hospital beds and slammed  Trump for spreading lies.

“If you want to point fingers — we built more beds than we needed — our only mistake was believing your numbers, believing your projections,” Cuomo said.

"Whose projections were wrong? Head of the CDC, Peter Navarro and head of the White House coronavirus task force. Fire them all. That's what I say. Fire them," Cuomo said. 

Cuomo insisted that he’d been appreciative enough of the presidential help.

“I don’t know, what am I supposed to send a bouquet of flowers?” Cuomo said.

Cuomo said that US states needed more federal help to manage the pandemic.

Trump "doesn’t want to provide funding to the states and he doesn’t want to help with testing ...if we don’t have federal help on testing, that's a real problem,” he warned.

Cuomo mocked Trump noting that he wanted to weasel out of his responsibility in regard to providing sound leadership to Americans.

Trump did a “very graceful 180” when he went from saying he had total authority to reopen the nation’s economy to instead saying states would form their own plans, Cuomo said mockingly.

Cuomo slammed Trump for really “doing nothing” for the US nation.

“All he’s doing is walking in front of the parade, but he has nothing to do with the timing of the parade,” he said.

He said state governors will re-open business when the pandemic had eased and the timing was right. “Governors are going to open when they need to open."

In the meantime, the US has had one of the fastest-growing coronavirus infection rates.

US coronavirus death toll passes 35,000, cases top 700,000

US coronavirus deaths topped 35,400 on Friday, rising by more than 2,000 for the fourth day in a row, according to a Reuters tally.

The number of known coronavirus infections in the United States surpassed 700,000, the most of any country.

At the same time, the tally of lives lost from COVID-19, the highly contagious lung disease caused by the virus, has soared to more than 35,000. New York state accounts for nearly half those deaths.

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