Cuomo finally lets loose on Trump

President Donald Trump and New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo in a composite image. Credit: AP/Getty/AP Photo/Evan Vucci / Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images
Daily Point
Cuomo’s fire and fury
It took one presidential tweet for the gubernatorial gloves to come off.
In a fiery 15-minute monologue directed at President Donald Trump, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo stared into the camera Friday and threw verbal punch after verbal punch, veering from “thanks” laced with sarcasm to pointed criticism of the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Cuomo’s comments were a real-time response to Trump, who clearly was sitting in the White House watching the governor’s daily COVID-19 briefing.
—Randi F. Marshall @RandiMarshall
Talking Point
Virus wars against warriors
The nation’s Veterans Affairs hospitals became a hot topic this week after the official tally of coronavirus cases jumped 14% from Wednesday to Friday, to 5,105 cases. That number includes 301 deaths. In New York, 1,037 cases have been diagnosed in VA hospitals, leading to 90 deaths.
Sixteen VA medical centers are now reporting more than 100 cases of the virus, and one of them is Long Island’s lone VA hospital, in Northport.
The 502-bed Northport VA Medical Center has reported 115 cases of coronavirus among its patients and 10 deaths from the disease, according to the VA website.
And a letter from hospital officials to the Northport VA’s veterans advisory board, sent Wednesday, fleshes those numbers out, even though the totals were a bit outdated by Friday.
According to the letter, the hospital by Wednesday also had 64 employees who had tested positive for the virus, with another 36 staffers awaiting testing results.
And at the 139-bed nursing home at the VA site, 19 patients had tested positive for the coronavirus and one had died by Wednesday. Nine employees at the nursing home had tested positive, while four more were awaiting testing results.
Nationally, the Military Times reported that more than 1,500 VA staffers have been sickened by the virus and at least 14 have died.
The jump in numbers this week came as a shock because it was the biggest increase in VA cases in two weeks, but there is some question as to whether that’s due to lax reporting that’s been corrected or an actual surge in illnesses. Media outlets monitoring VA hospitals have at times reported that the numbers coming from the hospitals themselves don’t match the ones the VA is posting online.
As with the pandemic in general, the epicenter is New York.
The VA hospital in Brooklyn has recorded the most fatalities in the nation, with 36, while the Bronx VA is second with 33.
—Lane Filler @lanefiller
Coronavirus Data Point
An incomplete picture of nursing home fatalities
State officials finally released more detailed nursing home data Friday.
But it was far from complete.
The data included nursing home fatalities, but only if the facilities reported and only if there were five or more deaths.
Perhaps the only thing that’s clear is that what we don’t know far outpaces what we do know.
—Randi F. Marshall @RandiMarshall
Pencil Point
Isn't it ironic

Gary Varvel
For more cartoons, visit www.newsday.com/cartoons
Final Point
A new lease on life for an old attack ad
Long Islanders may have been familiar with an image shared by a Trump campaign Twitter account late Thursday: two shirtless, tattooed apparently Hispanic men looking menacingly at the camera, labeled as MS-13 gang members.
That particular image was prominently used in the 2017 Nassau County executive race between Republican Jack Martins and Democrat Laura Curran. The provocative anti-Curran mailer came at the time Long Islanders were learning of the gang’s brutality. It claimed Curran would “roll out the welcome mat for violent gangs like MS-13!”
Now the Trump campaign is using the imaging to viscerally connect likely Democratic presidential opponent Joe Biden to the dangers of immigration. Biden has encouraged supporters to paste their photos next to a shareable graphic saying “I’M ON TEAM JOE!”
It’s just the latest GOP use of the image for an attack ad that Professor Mitchell S. McKinney of the University of Missouri in 2017 told Newsday has “a Willie Horton look and feel.”
The image also popped up in a Virginia House delegate race last year, created by ad agency Creative Direct, according to the Virginian-Pilot.
At that time, Jess Proud of the New York GOP, which paid for the anti-Curran ad, told The Point that Creative Direct didn’t make the Empire State content.
Asked whether there was a connection between the teams that worked on the New York ad and Trump’s post, a Trump campaign spokesman told The Point there was no connection and that this was a simple graphic created by using the “TEAM JOE” meme-generating tool on Biden’s website.
As for the unscientific win record of using that image, neither Martins nor the Virginia Republican went on to victory.
—Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano