On Wednesday during a conference call with media, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo appeared to threaten the safety of President Trump if he visits New York City.
Cuomo had been responding to a report from the New York Post about Trump considering the denial of federal assistance to “lawless” cities with rising murder rates after defunding police departments, such as New York City.
“He better have an army if he thinks he’s gonna walk down the street in New York. New Yorkers don’t want to have anything to do with him,” Cuomo said, in an apparent threat to President Trump’s safety. “He can’t have enough bodyguards to walk through New York City, people don’t want to have anything to do with him.”
Cuomo then accused Trump of trying to “kill New York City.”
“It is more of the same from him. It’s political, it is gratuitous. And it’s illegal. But it is another attempt to kill New York City,” he claimed. “President Ford said drop dead. President Trump has been actively trying to kill New York City since he’s been elected.”
Trump, who was born in Queens and raised in Manhatten, lived in New York his entire life, up until October 2019, when he changed his primary residence from Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan to his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida. Trump has done more for New York City than Cuomo could dream of doing in several lifetimes.
Cuomo attempted to walk back his threatening language at the end of the conference call. “My comment about the president and bodyguards in New York City, all I’m saying is that he is persona non grata in New York City. And I think he knows that,” he explained. “And he’ll never come back to New York, because New Yorkers will never forget how gratuitously mean he has been to New Yorkers and how many times he’s tried to kill the city that gave him his start and birthed him. That’s what I meant about the bodyguards.”
Governor Cuomo’s failed response to the coronavirus pandemic resulted in New York becoming the coronavirus hotspot of the entire world. His nursing home policy, which forced COVID-19-positive patients to be admitted to nursing homes and long-term care facilities, caused a massive outbreak of the disease in those facilities, causing the death rate to skyrocket. New York state was also slow to react to the pandemic, trailing behind other states, which had far better responses.
Cuomo’s language regarding Trump isn’t much different from past statements he’s made. In 2014, Cuomo said that conservatives weren’t welcome in New York. “Who are they? Right to life, pro-assault weapons, anti-gay — if that’s who they are, they have no place in the state of New York because that’s not who New Yorkers are.”
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Matt Margolis is the author of Airborne: How The Liberal Media Weaponized The Coronavirus Against Donald Trump and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis
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