On CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday, host Jake Tapper bluntly asked New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio if his comments downplaying the coronavirus in its early stages may have played a role in the rapid spread of the virus in New York.
After playing clips from earlier in the year of de Blasio telling New Yorkers to go about their normal lives, Tapper asked the mayor, "In retrospect, is that message at least in part to blame for how rapidly the virus has spread across the city?"
But de Blasio pushed back, saying, "Jake, we should not be focusing, in my view, on anything looking back. This is just about how we save lives going forward ... This was a very different world just a short time ago."
Tapper responded, "Mr. Mayor, weren’t your actions in this outbreak also far, far behind the curve?"
Again de Blasio refused to acknowledge it, "I think the big historical point here that will be looked back on is if this country had the testing we needed this could have been a very different reality."