On the first night of the Democratic National Convention (DNC), New York’s Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo slammed Republican President Donald Trump over his response to the ongoing coronavirus epidemic.
Cuomo’s statements underscore his working history with Trump during the pandemic and the difference between the two leaders’ responses in handling coronavirus.
“In many ways, COVID is just a metaphor,” Cuomo said during his remarks at the DNC, which began virtually on Monday. “The virus attacks when the body is weak and when it cannot defend itself. These past few years, America’s body politic has been weakened…. In effect, our immune system and our current federal government is dysfunctional and incompetent—it couldn’t fight off the virus.”
“The virus had been attacking us for months before they even knew it was here,” Cuomo continued. “We saw the failure of a government that tried to deny the virus, then tried to ignore it, and then try to politicize it…. Today, six months after it began the nation is still unprepared…. Today we trail the world in defeating COVID—we have over 5 million cases.”
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“Americans learned the critical lesson: how vulnerable we are when we are divided, and how many lives can be lost when our government is incompetent,” Cuomo added, stating that Trump’s presidency has weakened the nation by exacerbating pre-existing racial, anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic sentiments
“Trump didn’t create the initial division,” Cuomo said. “Trump only made it worse.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated as more information becomes available.
