Cuomo Blames Trump for Brooklyn Protests, Campaign Says Otherwise

The campaign of President Donald Trump says it had nothing to do with an alleged robocall that's said to have went out to some residents in Brooklyn earlier this week, urging them to organize mass protests against Gov. Andrew Cuomo and a series of new restrictions on mass gatherings in the area.

Hundreds of individuals, many from the Orthodox Jewish community, took to the streets this week to protest the new restrictions, which were sparked by a major uptick in the virus.

The voice on the alleged robocall, which was first reported by the New York Daily News, claimed to have been in contact with the Trump campaign and encouraged residents to gather in Borough Park, a Brooklyn neighborhood, for the protests.

“We just hung up the phone with a group of us that are in touch with the Trump campaign,” the caller says. “They’re urging everybody to come out switch signs [saying] ‘Cuomo killed thousands.’ Come to 13th Avenue and hold big signs.”

The validity of the message had been called into question Friday, with some saying it wasn't a robocall at all, but a message sent out as a joke on a private messaging app.

Samantha Zager, deputy national press secretary for the Trump campaign, said in a statement that they were not involved with the alleged robocall.

“The Trump campaign had no involvement with this call,” Zager said.

It remains unclear if the Trump campaign has had any communications with leaders from the Orthodox Jewish community in New York. Photos and video from the demonstrations this week show several flags and signs in support of Trump’s reelection.

But leaders from the Orthodox Jewish community have said that support for the president wasn’t the main driver of the unrest — it was confusion from Cuomo’s office over its plan to tackle a handful of COVID-19 clusters in Brooklyn.

Assemblyman Simcha Eichenstein, a Democrat who represents Borough Park, tweeted that his residents were not driven by politics.

“Our hurt and pain come from the [Cuomo] bait and switch,” Eichenstein tweeted. “We worked with him and he lied. Not everything is political. This is not about Trump.”

Cuomo’s held a few calls with leaders from the Orthodox Jewish community in recent days to discuss the state’s response to the clusters, which popped up in recent weeks in Brooklyn and areas of Orange, Rockland, and Broome Counties.

When things didn’t appear to be getting better, Cuomo announced a new strategy Tuesday to address those clusters. The state has now divided the areas into three zones, each with different restrictions on contact and mass gathering.

The zones can be likened to a bullseye. The middle, the red zone, has the strictest restrictions, limiting houses of worship to 25% capacity, and closing all nonessential businesses. The surrounding orange and yellow zones have more lenient restrictions.

Those new rules sparked the protests in Brooklyn, at which no one was arrested or fined by the New York City Police Department, according to reports. That’s despite an alleged assault on a reporter, and several violations of the state’s COVID-19 restrictions.

Cuomo criticized the NYPD and prosecutors in Brooklyn during a conference call with reporters Friday for not doing more to enforce those laws during the protests.

“The law is the law, and there is no provision for discretion where a person is clearly violating the law,” he said.

Cuomo also played the alleged robocall for reporters and called its message “divisive” and “disgusting.”

"How ugly, how divisive, how poisonous, how disgusting, how hurtful, how painful," Cuomo said. "This is the New York that just showed solidarity and unity that was unprecedented ... The Trump campaign wants to inflame divisions. Meanwhile, they're putting peoples' lives at risk."

The protests, for now, have died down in Brooklyn, though opposition to the new COVID-19 restrictions remains. They’ll be in effect for at least another week and a half, at which time they’ll be reevaluated by the state.

As of Friday, the positivity rate in the state’s COVID-19 clusters was 5.4% — well above the statewide positivity rate of 1.1%.