Donald Trump on Tuesday called any governor who resisted his 'total authority' as president a mutineer and threatened to withhold coronavirus aid from them if they didn't heed his call to reopen the country.
'Tell the Democrat Governors that “Mutiny On The Bounty” was one of my all time favorite movies. A good old fashioned mutiny every now and then is an exciting and invigorating thing to watch, especially when the mutineers need so much from the Captain. Too easy!,' he tweeted.
The president was defending his claim that he has authority to reopen states to business in the wake of the economic devastation caused by the coronavirus, which goes against the 10th amendment of the constitution.
Several governors - led by New York's Andrew Cuomo - blasted Trump.
Cuomo called the president 'schizophrenic' and threatened to take him to court over the matter as a constitutional crisis began to brew.
Trump took to Twitter after Cuomo went on the morning shows to slam the president's interpretation of the balance of power between the state and federal government.
'Cuomo’s been calling daily, even hourly, begging for everything, most of which should have been the state’s responsibility, such as new hospitals, beds, ventilators, etc. I got it all done for him, and everyone else, and now he seems to want Independence! That won’t happen!,' the president wrote.
The standoff began during a heated press conference inside the White House on Monday evening, when Trump claimed that his office holds 'absolute power' over the shutdowns prompted by the novel coronavirus outbreak - hours after Cuomo and eight other Democratic governors unveiled a pact to work together to co-ordinate the reopenings of their respective states.
'When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total,' Trump told reporters in response to the announcement, declining to specify where his authority to overrule states resides when pressed by DailyMail.com. Instead, he reiterated: 'The federal government has absolute power.
But Cuomo pointed out Trump left it up to the states to buy their own medical supplies and to issue stay-at-home orders during the coronavirus crisis, arguing the president can't accede that responsibility to the states and then contend he is an absolute authority.
'This is a 180. I have total authority. I'm going to tell the states what to do. So it makes no sense. It is schizophrenic,' Cuomo said Tuesday morning on CNN's 'New Day.'
The New York governor made it clear he would not obey any such order from Trump to reopen his state, adding he would take the matter to the courts to let them rule on it.
'If he ordered me to reopen in a way that would endanger the public health of the people of my state, I wouldn't do it. And we would have a constitutional challenge between the state and the federal government and that would go into the courts, and that would be the worst possible thing he could do at this moment would be to act dictatorial and to act in a partisan divisive way,' Cuomo said.
The governor warned Trump could create a 'constitutional crisis.'
'The only way this situation gets worse is if the president creates a constitutional crisis. If he says to me, I declare it open, and that is a public health risk or it's reckless with the welfare of the people of my state, I will oppose it. And then we will have a constitutional crisis like you haven't seen in decades,' Cuomo said on MSNBC's 'Morning Joe.'
'I just hope he gets control of what he was saying last night and he doesn't go down that road,' he added.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called President Donald Trump 'schizophrenic' for claiming he has 'total authority' over the states to reopen the United States
.@NYGovCuomo: “If [Trump] ordered me to reopen in a way that would endanger the public health of the people of my state, I wouldn’t do it.”cnn.it/3ba912R
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Trump has clashed with many of the nation's governors, who have pleaded with the federal government for masks, ventilators, personal protective equipment, and other supplies to battle the coronavirus.
He also has pushed responsibility on them.
'I want the governors to be running things,' he said earlier this month.
But Trump, who was born in New York and made his name there, has spoken warmly of his relationship with Cuomo, whom he has called a friend. The president's new claim of power, however, has changed the tone between them.
Cuomo was clear Tuesday morning on where he stood.
'Keep the politics out of it,' he advised Trump during his CNN appearance.
Cuomo acknowledged there is an election coming up in November but said the current health pandemic - over 588,000 infected by the coronavirus in the United States with more than 23,000 deaths - supersedes that.
'I know he's running for re-election. I know this is a political year. I know it is a hyperpartisan environment. I know it is red versus blue. Not anymore. Not when it comes to this. This is red, white and blue. I have 10,000 deaths in my state. This virus didn't kill Democrats or Republicans. It killed Americans. And it killed New Yorkers. And I'm not going to go down a political road,' Cuomo said.
Cuomo refuted the president's claim to power, pointing out the constitution lays out the balance of power between the state and federal governments.
'It says the federal government does not have absolute power,' Cuomo said on CNN Tuesday morning. 'It says the exact opposite that the president said. It says that would be a king. We would have had King George Washington and we didn't have King George Washington. We don't have King Trump. We have President Trump. And, remember, the colonies created the federal government. The states created the federal government, not the other way around. We have a tenth amendment that is explicit, certain responsibilities are state responsibilities.'
Cuomo said the situation would be funny if the country weren't in the middle of a health crisis.
'To hear a Republican stand up there, by the way, and argue big government and total authority of the federal government is so amusing,' he said on MSNBC.
'If it wasn't so serious, it could be funny, it could be a comedy skit. It's frightening. It's frightening. This is the last place we should be, this crazy politics, this absurd positioning when we're talking about life and death. And we really have the toughest governmental problem we've ever faced right in front of us, and we have to deal with this absurdity,' he added.
The president, when pressed by reporters at the White House on Monday, could not say how he had the 'total authority' he claimed to hold or who told him he had such power.
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Source: Dailymail
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