About His Majesty, Ubu Roi

Cuomo denies Trump has ‘total authority’ to reopen US economy

Donald Trump is not a “king” and does not have “total authority” to reopen the US economy from its coronavirus shutdown, New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, said on Tuesday.

At a chaotic, angry and rambling White House briefing on Monday night, Trump, champing at the bit to reopen the US as early as 1 May, made a startling claim.

“When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total,” he said, referring to public health and police powers in the states and territories.

Constitutional scholars and state governors alike were quick to reject the idea with Cuomo leading the charge in a spat over tackling the pandemic that is pitting the White House versus state leaders.

“I don’t know what the president is talking about, frankly,” Cuomo told NBC. “We have a constitution … we don’t have a king … the president doesn’t have total authority.”

Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, also chimed in.

“I am not running for office to be King of America,” he said in a tweet.

“I respect the constitution. I’ve read the constitution. I’ve sworn an oath to it many times. I respect the great job so many of this country’s governors – Democratic and Republican – are doing under these horrific circumstances.”

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On Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund said the pandemic would lead to the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

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On Monday, the names of a “council to reopen America” were reported.

All were Trump administration officials, among them the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner.

There were no public health advisers among them.

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Trump’s performance at the White House podium, meanwhile, prompted alarm.

His repeated claim of “total authority” reminded some observers of Richard Nixon’s infamous claim after the Watergate scandal that “when the president does it, that means that it’s not illegal”.

Steve Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas, tweeted:

“Nope. That would be the literal definition of a totalitarian government – which our traditions, our constitution, and our values all rightly and decisively reject.”

There was also dissent among some Republican Trump allies in Congress, many of whom spent years accusing Barack Obama of executive overreach, including the Florida senator Marco Rubio.

As TV networks and news websites continued to debate whether Trump’s briefings should be shown live at all, some observers reached for more colorful language to describe the president’s misleading claims, attacks on journalists and showing of a propaganda film largely culled from Fox News.

In a column for the Daily Beast, the former Republican consultant turned anti-Trump author and organizer Rick Wilson called the briefing “a manic, gibbering, squint-eyed ragefest by America’s Worst President, a petty display by a failed man who long ago passed the limits of his competence and knowledge”.

On Tuesday, the White House scheduled its next briefing for 5pm.