Downstate New York was the COVID-19 hotspot of the world. But the geniuses in the Democratic Party thought it was a good idea to have Governor Cuomo deliver a prime time speech on the first night of their convention.
Cuomo jumped right in with some Orwellian rewriting of history by lauding his own response to the coronavirus in New York. “New Yorkers were ground zero for the COVID virus, and have gone from one of the highest infection rates on the globe to one of the lowest,” he said. “We climbed the impossible mountain, and right now, we are on the other side.”
Cuomo then attempted to blame President Trump for the pandemic, while also shifting blame away from China by saying, “the European virus infected the Northeast while the White House was still fixated on China.”
The European virus? Seriously?
“The virus had been attacking us for months before they even knew it was here,” Cuomo said. It sounded like he was blaming Trump for this, not the fact that China covered up the disease for weeks before informing the World Health Organization on December 31, 2019. “We saw the failure of a government that tried to deny the virus, then tried to ignore it, and then tried to politicize it.”
Now that’s rich. Cuomo accuses Trump of politicizing the virus when it was Cuomo who praised Trump’s response to the pandemic earlier this year before flip-flopping when it was politically necessary. “What the federal government did working with states was a phenomenal accomplishment,” Cuomo said back in April. “We bent the curve. We flattened the curve. Government did it. People did it, but government facilitates people’s actions, right?”
But Cuomo saw the political writing on the wall, and as his state plunged into disaster from his mismanagement of the virus, he needed to blame Trump in order to maintain his image in the Democratic Party. During his DNC speech, he predictably blamed Trump, not himself, for New York’s failed response to the coronavirus, deriding “the failed federal government that watched New York get ambushed by their negligence and then watched New York suffer but all through it learned absolutely nothing.”
In the same speech, Cuomo blamed Trump for New York’s coronavirus response, but praised himself for New York’s response, as if it’s possible to have it both ways.
“And for all the pain and all the tears, our way worked. And it was beautiful,” Cuomo said.
Excuse me?
A Wall Street Journal investigation published last month detailed how Cuomo and NYC Mayor de Blasio’s response to the coronavirus “was marred by missed warning signs and policies that many health-care workers say put residents at greater risk and led to unnecessary deaths.”
They identified seven missteps: improper patient transfers; insufficient isolation protocols; inadequate staff planning; mixed messages between state, city government, and hospital officials; overreliance on government sources for key equipment; procurement-planning gaps; and Incomplete staff-protection policies.
New York accounts for roughly 30 percent of America’s coronavirus deaths.
The Wall Street Journal also noted that “leaders in states like California and Ohio acted quickly to contain the spread,” but Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio “delayed taking measures to close the state and city even as the number of cases swelled, despite warnings from doctors, nurses and schoolteachers.”
The failures of Cuomo and de Blasio have been largely ignored by the media. Democrats, intent on politicizing the virus as a means to oust Trump in November, have done everything they can to prop up Cuomo as an effective leader during the pandemic, but the numbers prove his way failed and was anything but beautiful.
"Our way worked. And it was beautiful." —@NYGovCuomo#DemocraticConvention pic.twitter.com/etjEopoi9M
— Matt Margolis 🇺🇸 (@mattmargolis) August 18, 2020
In fact, according to the New York Times, the “coronavirus outbreak in New York City became the primary source of infections around the United States.” With over 32,000 deaths, New York state has had more COVID-19 deaths than any state in the country, and is second to New Jersey in deaths per capita.
"[New York] did it correctly." —Dr. Fauci
COVID-19 deaths per capita. Comparison of US States. pic.twitter.com/lf1ny4GC8g
— Matt Margolis 🇺🇸 (@mattmargolis) July 21, 2020
And then there’s the nursing home deaths scandal. Cuomo’s policy forcing nursing homes to accept coronavirus-positive patients resulted in a massive outbreak amongst that population—the most vulnerable cohort to the disease. In order to cover up his deadly mistake, the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) quietly changed their reporting policy around late April/early May so that nursing home and long-term care patients who died from COVID-19 in a hospital were not included as nursing home COVID-19 fatalities.
New York was the only state to do this.
Despite Cuomo’s botched response to the coronavirus, Joe Biden thanked him for his leadership.
.@AndrewCuomo, thank you for your leadership and the example you’ve set for all Americans during this pandemic. #DemConvention pic.twitter.com/Ir11a1vJQs
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) August 18, 2020
In May, Governor Cuomo defended his nursing home policy by saying, “Older people, vulnerable people are going to die from this virus. That is going to happen despite whatever you do.”
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Matt Margolis is the author of the new book Airborne: How The Liberal Media Weaponized The Coronavirus Against Donald Trump, and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis
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