After having his mother, 86, die of complications from the coronavirus, New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer pointed the finger at President Donald Trump, saying the president has "my mom's blood on his hands."
"In New York City, this is playing out in so many families and, I've got to tell you, Donald Trump has blood on his hands, and he has my mom's blood on his hands," the New York Democrat told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Monday.
"If you had said to me what would ultimately have my mother fall, I never thought it would be some virus, and it is still hard to get around that," he added.
Stringer did not mention New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo or New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, both fellow Democrats, the two men actually in charge of the healthcare response and social distancing policies in the state and city.
But he did blame Trump for sending the USS Comfort to the harbor to take on non-coronavirus cases so New York hospitals could focus their response to the global pandemic.
"He sent us a hospital that's right here in the Manhattan harbor, and no one can get on that hospital – this is something that is just outrageous," Stringer told Cooper of Trump, referring to how coronavirus cases were to be careful in regular hospitals and the National Guard's makeshift hospital in Central Park.
Stringer did lament the local social distancing guidelines restrict a proper funeral gathering and the Jewish mourning of Shiva.
"It's very tough to mourn under these circumstances," Stringer said.
"Government's supposed to protect our people, and we're supposed to protect our parents and grandparents the way they protected us, and we're not able to do that," he added. "And perhaps the thing I struggle with the most is how do you mourn at a time when you can't connect with people? There can't be a funeral. There can't be a traditional Shiva.
"There's no way to reach out to my stepfather and see him personally because he's quarantined. My little kinds can't see goodbye to their grandma. There's something wrong playing out here."
New York state has more than 130,689 confirmed coronavirus cases. That is more than all but one country in the world (barely) Italy, 135,032), according to Worldometer, which gets his data from Johns Hopkins University and recent media reports.
There have been more than 10,516 deaths attributed to the coronavirus in the U.S., and more than half of those deaths are centralized in New York (4,758) and New Jersey (1,003).
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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