Cuomo mum on Trump’s work
Gov. fails to critique president, deflects questions
ALBANY, N.Y. >> Gov. Andrew Cuomo declined to offer a critique Tuesday of President Trump’s first five weeks in office, also deflecting questions about what will happen if Trump takes a budget ax to Medicaid, the foundation of New York’s healthcare system.
“I think I’ll let the American people decide what they think their opinion is,” Cuomo said during a brief Capitol press conference in a room filled with his political appointees. “Obviously here in New York we have philosophical differences with President Trump on the issue of immigration, et cetera. But we have been articulating those differences wherever they are relevant and we’ll see how that relationship develops.”
Cuomo said he met with Trump before he was sworn in as president, when the two talked about “infrastructure. I haven’t spoken with him since then.”
Cuomo’s low key response just hours before Trump was to give his first State of the Union speech was in sharp contrast to fiery remarks he made earlier declaring solidarity with refugees and illegal aliens and challenging Congress to go to war with Trump.
“To the Democrats in Congress: they better stand up and they better fight,” Cuomo said at a union rally in the Bronx last week. “They better show us what they’re made of because there is no going back ... It’s time to stand up and show us what you’re made of. This is not a time to make a deal.”
Cuomo has also taken to declaring personal identification with refugees, immigrants, Jews, blacks, gays and others in recent speeches. He mostly recently did so at a media event last week condemning was he said was a wave of hate crimes since the November election.
Cuomo was asked about Trump during a Tuesday Q&A that followed a rare public meeting of his cabinet, sidestepping a question about what will happen if Trump cuts billions in federal Medicaid money New York receives. In January, Cuomo said the cost to New York of an Obamacare repeal could be as high as $3.7 billion.
“What is Plan B to an event you can’t even conceive of, right?” Cuomo said, after being asked is he had a backup plan to replace any lost federal funds. “Now you have a whole continuum of possible proposals ... Are you going to say to New York, Obamacare is repealed, now here’s the Medicaid money. It has fewer restrictions, but it only has half the money.”
As for what Trump intends to do, “all you have is a lot of rumors ... You can’t come up with an intelligent plan to a series of hypotheticals. But if it did happen, we would have to respond.”