Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-New York), who saw his poll numbers rise and scored a $5.1 million advance for his pandemic memoir, called leading the state (which had the worst response of all states) during the pandemic a “tremendous personal benefit.”
“Very few people were going through what we went through and we went through it together,” he said. “And speaking for myself, it was a tremendous personal benefit.”
.@NYGovCuomo on Covid: “Speaking for myself, it was a tremendous personal benefit." pic.twitter.com/ijMtmIK8ll
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) July 9, 2021
Cuomo obviously (I hope) wasn’t intentionally talking about his political and financial windfalls. Still, the language used during his virtual address to the National Governors Association came across as remarkably tone-deaf—especially considering the fact that his deadly nursing home policy resulted in many thousands of deaths of elderly New Yorkers.
“It’s easy for him to say. He didn’t lose a loved one,” Danielle Messina, who lost her father in a Staten Island nursing home, told the New York Post. “Cuomo gave family members and friends private testing instead of testing people in the nursing homes… He hurt the most vulnerable.”
“If that’s Cuomo’s best, I’d hate to see his worst,” said Tracey Alvino, whose father died in a Long Island nursing home. “Fifteen thousand senior citizens in nursing homes were killed because of his fatally flawed decisions that were not based on science…His personal benefit was $5.1 million in his bank account from his book.”
Cuomo’s book was ultimately a flop. Released in October, by the end of February, it had only sold less than 46,000 copies. Crown Publishing, an imprint of Penguin Random House, had undoubtedly hoped to cash in on the governor’s surge in popularity last year when his approval numbers skyrocketed during the pandemic but ultimately lost a lot of money on that gamble.
In addition to his nursing home scandal, Cuomo faces multiple accusations of sexual misconduct.
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