Host Anderson Cooper asked, “We’re seeing this now, this rally this weekend in Oklahoma, the president’s going to, theoretically, pack 19,000 people into an indoor arena. Doesn’t seem like there’s any social distancing. No one’s required to wear a mask, though they’ll probably hand them out. Would you allow a large political rally in New York, in these circumstances, in this time?”
Cuomo responded, “No, no. Look, the president’s position all along has been a political position. His position was, you know, this is a virus, it’s a flu, don’t worry about it, reopen the economy, reopen the economy, reopen the economy. He believes his re-election is correlated to the economy. I don’t even think that’s right politically. I think it’s correlated to leadership, not to the Dow Jones stock market index. But that’s always been his position, just reopen the economy. The states that are doing that are seeing the virus go up and seeing their hospitals fill up, and their ICU beds fill up, and that’s going to, not only hurt the economy, it’s also going to cause more Americans to die.”
You would think he’d feel enough humility about the apocalypse his state just endured, largely due to his own incompetence, to at least emphasize the key difference between Trump’s rally and the endless massive demonstrations that New York has hosted since George Floyd’s death — namely, that Trump’s rally will be held indoors. Or, failing that, he might distinguish the two by noting that he doesn’t have much power to stop people from getting together in the streets but does have considerable power to close off buildings.