It looks as if there isn’t going to be any sort of Kumbaya moment coming between President Trump and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, not that anyone was really expecting one. As you may recall, DHS suspended the ability of New York State residents to apply for or renew membership in the various Trusted Traveler programs that allow vetted travelers to more quickly get through customs at airports and border crossings. This was done because the state’s new “green light” laws forbid the sharing of driver registration and other data with ICE and CBP. That means that DHS can’t vet them properly to approve their applications.
Shortly after that, Cuomo requested a meeting with the President to see if they could work out a compromise. It wasn’t much of a compromise at all in reality, but Trump agreed to the meeting. Nothing came of it, of course, and the two went their separate ways. You might think that a little civility could ensue sine the effort was at least made, but no. Cuomo decided to double down and declare that Trump just wants an excuse to have ICE “assault immigrants.” (Mental Recession)
Governor Andrew Cuomo, in an interview on Wednesday, has accused law enforcement at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of wanting to ‘assault’ illegal immigrants.
Cuomo (D-NY) made the comments prior to a meeting with President Trump concerning the Trusted Traveler Program…
“They want access to the undocumenteds so they can give it to ICE,” the governor told WAMC, “and ICE can have a feeding frenzy assaulting undocumented people.”
That meeting was clearly never going to end well, at least for Cuomo. His “compromise” was an offer to “consider” providing information only about residents who actually apply for the Trusted Traveler programs, and even then only on a “case by case basis.” That’s obviously not going to satisfy DHS because they would have no assurance that they would receive all the required information from every applicant if Cuomo’s office is picking and choosing whose information will be provided and whose won’t. It would have also added another layer to the already lengthy process of reviewing these applications leading to even longer delays.
But did things have to devolve to this level of incivility? Granted, President Trump set the bar pretty low before the meeting began, tweeting about the Governor’s request negatively and including another reference to Cuomo’s CNN host brother Chris as “Fredo.”
But before you place all of the blame on Trump, take a look at this brief CBS report on a press conference that Cuomo held.
Governor Cuomo was laughing off the meeting before he ever even got in the room with the President. When a reporter asked him about his expectations, he said he really didn’t have any, but it was his job to “fight” for New Yorkers. He heaped accusations about Trump’s supposed motives onto the fire and basically used it as an opportunity to get in some grandstanding.
For Andrew Cuomo, this was little more than a self-serving opportunity to grab some headlines and demonstrate how much he’s RESISTING Trump. He knew his offer wasn’t going to address the underlying problem, but he marched in with it anyway. He also described the need to fix this situation as an “urgent” problem. It’s actually not. Nobody is losing the ability to travel by being excluded from the Trusted Traveler programs. They’ll just have to wait in line at customs with the rest of us. And if they want to know why, tell them to take it up with New York’s state government and their new laws designed to shield illegal aliens.
