New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo told CNN on Saturday that if President Donald Trump put a quarantine on New York to stop the spread of the coronavirus that it would be a “federal declaration of war” on the state.

“Look, if the president was considering this, I guarantee he would have called me. I mean, we talk about relatively trivial matters when it comes to dealing with this situation,” Cuomo said. This is a civil war kind of — this is civil war kind of discussion.”

“I don’t believe that he could be serious, that any federal administration could be serious about a physical lockdown of states or parts of states across this country,” Cuomo continued. “I don’t believe it is legal. I think it would be economic chaos. I don’t think the American people would stand for it. It’s just a question of time before you see the numbers growing in hot spots across the nation. So, I think it makes absolutely no sense and I don’t believe any serious governmental personality or professional would support it.”

“I’ve sued the federal government many times by the way over the past few years, we’ve had quite a number of policy decisions,” Cuomo later added. “I do not believe it’s going to come to that on this. Again, I have been speaking to the president. This would be a declaration of war on states, a federal declaration of war, and wouldn’t just be New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, next week it would be Louisiana with New Orleans, and week after that Detroit, Michigan, and it would run across the nation. I don’t think the president is looking to start a lot of wars with states just about now for a lot of reasons.”

WATCH:

Gov. Cuomo on possibility Trump will impose enforced quarantine on New York: "This would be a declaration of war on states." pic.twitter.com/7rCFHMWzTh — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 28, 2020

Later in the interview, CNN’s Ana Cabrera asked Cuomo, “What’s the status when it comes to ventilators in New York state? Because I know that’s been one of the big issues of concern for you.”

Cuomo responded, “Well, the ventilators which by the way, before this situation nobody really gave a second thought to ventilators, what has happened, one of the peculiar situations with this disease it’s a respiratory disease, it effects the lungs very badly and people who are acutely ill with the virus they all need a ventilator and they’re on these ventilators much longer than most people are on ventilators with other diseases.”

“So you have more people needing ventilators, and they’re on them longer, which increases the need for the ventilators. And everybody is trying to get ventilators,” Cuomo continued. “You have 50 states bidding against each other for ventilators. You have 50 states competing with the federal government to buy ventilators. You have countries around the world trying to get ventilators. So we’re trying to do the best we can. We’re acquiring as many as we can. There’s a new technology that we’re using that splits, they call it splitting, where one ventilator can do two people. We are implementing that procedure across the state, and we’re doing the best we can to move people that need the ventilators to places that have the ventilators. But that’s one of the great logistical problems with this entire situation.”