De Blasio, Newsom push back on Trump’s ‘bad management’ rhetoric

President Donald Trump accused state governments of using the pandemic to make up for “25 years of bad management,” as local leaders prod the federal government for more aid. Democrats were not pleased.

In a wide-ranging interview with Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business, Trump was asked how he would decide which states and cities get what money. Those remarks drew pushback on Sunday.

“You’ve had a lot of states and cities that have been very badly run for a long time. A lot of them are trying to use the Covid problem, you know that, for making up what’s happened over 25 years of bad management,” Trump told Bartiromo.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who appeared on Fox Business to counter Trump’s “bad management” claim, said his request for more money — $7.5 billion — would replace funds gone to essential workers. The city, he said on Sunday, was “booming” pre-pandemic.

“I don’t think we should be talking about red states and blue states. We should be talking about American states and American cities, how to put America back on its feet.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said his state’s budget deficit can be directly attributed to Covid-19.

“The folks that are out there, the true heroes of this pandemic are health care workers and nurses,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Those county health systems have been ravaged. Their budgets have been devastated and depleted, their budget counts depleted since this pandemic. They’re the first ones to be laid off.”

Trump on Sunday singled out Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker: “He wants money, I know the family. He wants money because you know, let’s make up for 25 years and some very bad current years.”

The two have traded attacks on how their respective governments have handled pandemic response efforts. Last week, Pritzker said on CNN, “I have not been counting on the White House because there have been too many situations in which they have made promises, not delivered.”

The Republican Trump administration has repeatedly clashed with Democratic governors on providing aid, on ventilators and other medical equipment, on testing kits, and more recently, on the rush to reopen. Now, Democratic governors are also having to contend with legal challenges against lockdowns — even as many states begin peeling back some coronavirus restrictions.

America’s coronavirus death toll has crossed 88,800, and the number of cases is nearly 1.5 million, according to the Johns Hopkins University database.