Just what the doctor ordered: Two old leaders bickering with one another on Twitter as COVID-19 ripples throughout the country.
In a tweet touting his “very good” conference call on Monday with state governors on the coronavirus outbreak, President Donald Trump took a swipe at New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D).
“Cuomo of New York has to ‘do more,'” Trump wrote.
The New York governor fired back shortly afterward.
“I have to do more?” Cuomo tweeted. “No — YOU have to do something! You’re supposed to be the President.”
Trump deleted his tweet and re-posted it an hour later, presumably to correct the “Nations’s” typo in the original tweet.
Cuomo responded with a new retort.
“Happy to do your job, too,” he tweeted. “Just give me control of the Army Corps of Engineers and I’ll take it from there.”
The governor’s tweet included a link to his New York Times op-ed in which he urged Trump to allow New York to use the Army Corps of Engineers to assist in creating temporary medical centers in the state.
Trump’s singling out of Cuomo marks yet another instance of the President attacking New York, where state officials have been investigating and filing lawsuits against his businesses.
In February, Trump went as far as issuing a veiled threat against his former home state, tweeting that New York “must stop all of unnecessary lawsuits & harrassment [sic]” in the same post in which he mentioned his administration’s freeze on the state’s “Trusted Travelers” program. Trump’s Department of Homeland Security enacted the freeze after New York passed a law that blocked federal immigration officials from accessing the state’s DMV records.
