Pandemic poison pills: How Trump has kicked New York City and other hard-hit coronavirus hotspots when they’re down

New York Daily News, The (NY)

Donald Trump’s attacks on Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo may be obnoxious, but they’re hardly disqualifying. What’s disqualifying is that, in the midst of coronavirus, the president is rigging the rules to kick his former city and state in the head when it’s down.

Exhibit A: During a decent and lucid moment in late April, Trump told Cuomo that the Federal Emergency Management Agency would waive a requirement the state pay 25% of costs associated with the coronavirus. That’s what the feds, on a bipartisan basis, rightly did after the 9/11 attacks, and after Hurricane Sandy.

More than four months later, Trump, as is his wont, has left the state holding the entire bill.

Exhibit B: Trump and Mitch McConnell continue to stonewall the city, state and MTA as they ask Washington for help to claw out of a six-foot-deep coronavirus-induced budget hole.

Exhibit C: Friday, FEMA suddenly changed its rules to deny funding for the sanitizing of public buildings and spaces -- walloping New York City’s subways and schools, which are spending hundreds of millions apiece to try to prevent the spread of the microscopic menace as they reopen.

Trump demands cities and states and schools to reopen in one breath, then pulls back the help they need to do exactly that with the other. The man is an unnatural disaster.