Trump and Cuomo agree on one thing: DeSantis mishandled Covid

For years they overlapped in New York politics, two brash sons of Queens who ascended through the worlds of real estate and government as Donald J. Trump donated to Andrew M. Cuomo’s campaigns and made a virtual appearance at his bachelorette party.

Then they were adversaries, with Mr. Cuomo, a powerful Democratic governor of New York, embracing opportunities to serve as an antithesis to the divisive Republican president.

Now out of power after Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election and Mr. Cuomo stepped down in disgrace, they are in a moment of alignment, all opposing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over his handling of the coronavirus.

“Even Cuomo did better,” Mr. Trump said said in a recent video.

“Donald Trump is finally telling the truth,” Mr. Cuomo on Twitter this week, though he distanced himself from the former president’s vague eulogies on a podcast on Thursday.

Assessing the success or failure of each state’s response to the pandemic is a complex task.

New York — known for a time as the “epicenter of the epicenter” of the pandemic — and Florida, two large and populous states, both had higher death rates per 100,000 people than many other states.

Florida had a slightly lower death rate than New York from the start of the pandemic until March this year, according to a New York Times tracker.

Both governors received a lot of attention and criticism for their stewardship of the pandemic, with Mr. Cuomo remaining particularly heated about his administration’s handling of nursing home deaths during the pandemic.

For his part, Mr. DeSantis, who has emerged as Mr. Trump’s main Republican rival, has beaten his pandemic record — including his decision to reopen his state’s economy relatively early, even in the face of the spikes in the coronavirus and hospitalizations – a focal point of his campaign.

He has used the issue as a way to draw his own contrasts with Mr. Trump, who, he suggests, went too far in reinforcing Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert during the pandemic.

“Do you want Cuomo or do you want free Florida?” Mr. DeSantis said in Iowa this week. “If we just decided the primaries on that, I’d be happy with that verdict from Iowa voters.”

Representatives for Mr Trump and Mr DeSantis did not respond to requests for comment Thursday afternoon.

In New York, former Governor David A. Paterson, a Democrat, said the relationship between Mr. Trump and Mr. Cuomo was at times less rancorous than that between Mr. Trump and many other Democrats.

“The bitterness that existed between the president and others was much greater than theirs,” said Mr. Paterson, who said he recently had dinner with Mr. Cuomo.

“The positive interaction now is that it’s a tricky path,” he said, even though he noted that he didn’t expect it to be a “prelude to a partnership.”

In his podcast on Thursday, Mr Cuomo made it clear that he had no intention of hugging Mr Trump, noting that the former president had been highly critical of Democratic governors at the height of the pandemic, but that his tone seemed to change. – making a “total 180” – while focusing on a primary rival.

“Now the politics have changed for Mr. Trump, who is going up against Mr. DeSantis, and now Mr. Trump is saying, ‘Cuomo has done better than DeSantis,'” Mr. Cuomo said. “I’m very proud of the way New York handled it.”