New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, who recently lost his mother Arlene Stringer-Cuevas to coronavirus, directly blamed President Donald Trump’s slow response to the pandemic for her death, saying on Monday that the president has “my mom’s blood on his hands.”
After paying tribute to his mother’s life last Friday while calling the loss he felt “incalculable,” Stringer appeared on CNN on Monday afternoon to discuss her life and passing.
Describing her as a “New York original” who raised two boys as a single parent before becoming a New York City councilwoman, Stringer noted that while her death was “overwhelmingly sad” for his family, it is a story that’s playing out across the country.
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After talking more about her “extraordinary” life, Stringer said he never would have guessed that “some virus” would be what eventually killed his mother before taking aim at the president’s response to the outbreak.
“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,” Stringer declared.
The NYC comptroller went on to knock Trump for sending New York the USNS Comfort, noting that “no one can get on that hospital.” Shortly after its arrival to help ease the strain of the city’s overloaded hospitals, the Comfort only had a handful of patients on board and health experts criticized the insufficient aid it was providing the city.
“This is something that’s just outrageous, and so it’s very tough to mourn under these circumstances,” the comptroller added.
“You’re angry about that?” CNN anchor Anderson Cooper asked.
“I think we all are,” Stringer replied. “The government is supposed to protect our people, and we’re supposed to be able to protect our parents and grandparents the way they protected us, and we’re not able to do that.”
“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,” he continued. “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 kids can’t say bye to their grandma.”
As of publication, per the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, over 10,000 Americans had died from the coronavirus and nearly 350,000 cases had been reported in the United States. New York, the epicenter of the crisis, has seen nearly 5,000 deaths in the state and over 3,000 in New York City alone.
