Cuomo said he had heard from top federal officials but that the president himself had not called. | Kevin P. Coughlin/Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo Cuomo hits Trump as NYPD says terror attack was planned for weeks

Gov. Andrew Cuomo criticized President Donald Trump’s tweets following the Tuesday terrorist attack in New York City as officials revealed the man who rammed a truck into pedestrians and bicyclists along the West Side Highway was planning the attack "for weeks."

NYPD Intelligence and Counterterrorism chief John Miller said Sayfullo Saipov, a 29-year-old native of Uzbekistan, who most recently lived in Tampa, Florida, had carried out the attack "in the name of ISIS."


Cuomo, a Democrat who is positioning himself for a possible 2020 presidential bid, said he had heard from top federal officials but that the president himself had not called. Mayor Bill de Blasio said the same. Trump Wednesday morning faulted Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) for pushing for the “Diversity Visa Lottery” in 1990 — a program that officials say was used by Saipov to settle in the United States. The idea was absorbed into a larger immigration bill co-sponsored by 32 lawmakers, including Schumer and six Republicans.

“The president’s tweets, I think, were not helpful. I don’t think they were factual. They tended to point fingers and politicize the situation,” Cuomo said in response to a question from reporters. "His tweet wasn’t even accurate, as far as I’m concerned. That was a bipartisan law that was passed that had basically no relevance to the facts of this situation. ... As I said before, you play into the terrorists to the extent you disrupt and divide and frighten people in this society. The tone now should be the exact opposite.”

Eight people were killed and 11 seriously injured when Saipov drove a rental Home Depot truck into a bicycle lane along the West Side highway shortly after 3 p.m. Tuesday.

Miller said notes recovered from the truck and the ongoing investigation indicate the suspect followed instructions that ISIS has put out to carry out terror attacks using vehicles "to a T."

Neither Cuomo nor de Blasio received a call from Trump after the attack but both said they had been contacted by Department of Homeland Security officials.

De Blasio also called for unity in the wake of attack, though he did not take on the president directly.

“This should be a unity moment where the focus is on solving the crime and figuring out how we can move forward together, not the pointing of fingers,” de Blasio said.

Both the mayor and governor said they were not bothered that they had not heard from the president directly.

“I’m not bothered at all, because two senior officials called promptly and offered help, and I think that was appropriate," de Blasio said. “We are here to talk about this situation and the facts, and no one up here wants to politicize any of this.”