Mike Francesa Breaks With Trump: ‘They’re Bringing People Out of the Hospital in Queens in Body Bags, Five Minutes from Where He Grew Up’

Adrian CarrasquilloMar 31st, 2020, 11:26 am
 

Mike Francesa, affectionately known as the ‘Sports Pope’ for his domination of New York sports radio in recent decades, and someone who has supported Donald Trump as a candidate and now president, decisively broke with him over his response to the coronavirus crisis, thundering that “they’re bringing people out of the hospital in Queens in body bags, five minutes from where he grew up.”

Francesa, who gushed over then-candidate Trump in 2016, called the Mueller hearings “a complete waste of time” last year.

But those days appear to be over. Francesa on Monday began by mentioning how Trump accused hospitals of padding the numbers of masks they need because they were trying to “sell them out the back door,” adding that Trump told the media “to go investigate that.”

“You go investigate that!” Francesa yelled. “You have your military, your FEMA investigate that, that’s your job,” he said, pronouncing FEMA like the leg bone in his trademark Long Island accent. But then Francesa went on an epic rant, invoking the same blue collar men that Trump prides himself on having the support of.

“We’re watching one thing happen in our city on the 11 o’clock news every night, we’re watching people die, and now we know people who died. And we’re not seeing one or two people die now in our neighborhood, we’re seeing them die by the tens, and twenties, by the day. They’re bringing people out of the hospital in Queens in body bags, five minutes from where he grew up. We here know this isn’t right. You get the guys in the metropolitan area and ask the cops in New York if it’s right right now, ask the firemen in New York answering those ambulance calls if it’s right right now. Ask the nurses and the doctors in that hospital if it’s right right now, they know it’s not. They don’t have the supplies they need. So don’t give me the My Pillow guy doing a song and dance up here on a Monday afternoon when people are dying in Queens. Get the stuff made, get the stuff where it needs to go, and get the boots on the ground. Treat this like the crisis it is.”

Francesa was responding to Trump speculating that hospitals were asking for exorbitant numbers of masks because people were stealing them, and to a chilling New York Times report that detailed how Elmhurst hospital in Queens had become a dedicated Covid-19 hospital, with a freezer outside for the bodies piling up.

Trump, who has pivoted away from talk of reopening the country and the tumbling economy, towards saying he wants to save as many lives as possible in recent days, would likely be swayed more by someone like Francesa, than others, because the Sports Pope is exactly the type of person whose support Trump counts on. New York is no Trump haven, as his home city largely rejects him and his politics, leading Trump to move his residence to Florida and his Mar-a-Lago fortress. But New York working-class Catholics, the cops, and firemen, and nurses Francesa invokes could be a flashing warning light for Trump.

Francesa himself is no stranger, either, to zeroing in on policy shortcomings, and wielding influence in the city and state. His scathing critiques during Hurricane Sandy were thought of as being a contributing factor to getting the NYC marathon canceled, sadly showing that the coronavirus crisis is not the first time he was moved to action by New Yorkers lost to a tragedy. “It would’ve been in bad taste,” to hold the marathon, he told SB Nation, at the time. “They were still digging bodies out of Staten Island.”

Francesa’s comments now are even more stark in the context of how he used to speak about Trump. This is how he described him in 2016, noting that he wouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton and liked Trump because he was a “builder” who would take on the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, because “his ego will not let him do anything but a good job.”

“This guy works 20 hours a day. He doesn’t need the job. He doesn’t need the money. He doesn’t need the power. He had all that already. I think it’s about doing a good job. His ego will not let him do anything but a good job. Because he’s driven. You want someone driven in there that will do a good job. Because we need to fix things fast. Our infrastructure is a joke. I want a builder. The guy’s a builder. I want a builder. Our infrastructure is a joke. Our airports are a joke. Our rail systems a joke. It’s got to change. And we could put people to work there. Bring back the money that is sitting outside this country because of the tax laws. Bring it back. Tell them they have to give 5 percent to the infrastructure fund and then rebuild the infrastructure of this entire country. Railroads. Airports. Start tomorrow and build them all back up so that we have a beautiful county in 20 or 30 years for our kids.”

Four years later, amid a devastating public health crisis battering his city, this is how Francesa ended his rant on Monday:

“How can you have a scoreboard that says 2,000 people have died and tell us it’s OK if another 198,000 die, that’s a good job? How is that a good job in our country! It’s a good job if nobody else dies. Not if another 198,000 people die. So now 200,000 people are disposable?”

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