Democrat governors challenge Trump on national reopening, Cuomo calls president ‘vicious’

In a signal that any era of good feelings is over between opposition governors and President Donald Trump, on Monday Democrat governors in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Delaware announced a program that would usurp the federal role in reopening the nation to business and normalcy.

As soon as President Trump talked about a task force that would plan the reopening and tweeted about his predominant role in the process, the Democrats pounced. This sets up a power struggle to determine who gets to decide the timing and the implementation of the reopening—the federal government or state governments?

Said New York Governor Andrew Cuomo at a press conference on Monday: “We should start looking forward to ‘reopening,’ but reopening with a plan and a smart plan because if you do it wrong, it can backfire. What the art form is going to be here is doing that smartly and doing that productively and doing that in a coordinated way—in coordination with other states in the area and doing it as a cooperative effort where we learn from each other where we share information, share resources, where we share intelligence.” At the same conference he called President Trump “vicious.”

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said the coronavirus effort was “the fight of our lives,” also saying that “reopening ourselves back up will be equally as challenging.”

Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont said the states are working at “establishing the same protocols” due to residents in the tri-state area traveling to and from New York City for work.

Delaware Governor John Carney said, “This will help us as we think through what it takes to re-enter and to get our economies moving again.”

Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo said she is planning “the new normal,” and that the strategy must be “a smart, targeted approach to slowly reopen the economy in a way that keeps everybody…safe.”

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf said, “You have to get people healthy first or the economy is not going to work. It’s our responsibility to steer our way through these unchartered waters, and figure out a way back.”

These words are weak covers for a naked power grab by Democrat governors against the president. They know voters will give credit to whomever reopens the economy and returns some conventional way of life to America. The Democrats want that credit and they are willing to endanger the reopening of the nation by making it a partisan political football rather than letting the federal government take the lead on a question that affects the whole nation.