NYC Mayor de Blasio Puts Deaths on Trump's Hands

As New York state has emerged as the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is pointing an angry finger at President Donald Trump.

"If the president doesn't act, people will die that could have lived otherwise – senior citizens, folks who are members of families, and we can't get action from the president of the United States," De Blasio told NBC's "Meet the Press."

New York has already been given a large number of coronavirus tests (45,437) and has over six times as many confirmed cases (12,324) to date than the next most-infected state Washington (1,793), which has been the nation's deadliest locale with 94 fatalities. Washington is the next highest in coronavirus tests to date (27,171), while California is third (12,747). (Testing data is culled by Covidtracking.com.)

There have been 76 deaths in New York as of Sunday morning. (Confirmed-case and death data courtesy Worldometer, which culls its information from Johns Hopkins and other real-time media sources.)

"That's going to get worse," de Blasio told host Chuck Todd. "But Chuck, the president of the United States is from New York City, and he will not lift a finger to help his hometown. And I don't get it."

For his part, Trump has called on local leaders to focus their efforts on their communities and stop spending time blaming others.

Also, de Blasio had been at odds with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a fellow blue-state Democrat, at whether New York City and the state should move to a shelter in place policy. Cuomo has relented and finally done so after de Blasio's demands.

Specifically, next de Blasio wants national military resources to be deployed to his virus-ravaged city.

"The military has extraordinary medical capacity of its own that's been honed in fighting wars," de Blasio said. "They can handle any situation. All military personnel who are medically trained should be sent to places where this crisis is deep like New York. Right now.

"The military is the best logistical organization in the nation. If there are ventilators being produced anywhere in the country, we need to get them to New York, not weeks from now or months from now, in the next 10 days, and the only force in America who can do that is the military."

The Pentagon has prepped resources to be deployed to the area, but a U.S. Navy medical ship will not be ready for weeks at this point.

Governors have the power of the National Guard at their discretion and the New York National Guard is helping local officials distribute food, much of it in the hard-hit area of New Rochelle.

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