New York Governor Andrew Cuomo doesn’t want to hear questions about deaths in New York nursing homes that spiraled out of control thanks to policies his administration enacted.
It’s “pure politics,” you see,
Cuomo told WAMC radio host Alan Chartock nursing home deaths during the coronavirus pandemic were “a shiny object” and “pure politics.”
During Chartock’s interview, he brought up the nursing home issue. “Do you ever change your mind, governor, about anything based on what these reporters are,” he asked after a moment where Cuomo praised the press for its diligence during the early stages of pandemic. “For example, I think, about the nursing home situation, you got a lot of criticism from them, they asked one question after another. Is there anything you could point to in which you say ‘Ok, they really sort of have convinced me I’m on the wrong track here.’”
“No.” Cuomo curtly answered.
“The nursing home is an unfortunate situation on two levels. Number one, people in nursing homes died,” Cuomo said, making an obvious point. “The nursing home [issue] is pure politics,” Cuomo then said dismissively before pivoting to attack “Republicans in Congress” for sending letters about the issue only to states with Democratic governors.
Well, the New York Times found something much more than “pure politics.” They found pure incompetence.
More than 6,000 New Yorkers have died of COVID-19 in nursing homes, according to Pro-Publica. Columnist Michael Goodwin applies the necessary spanking.
“The nursing home thing it’s just all politics and it’s, frankly, the New York Post, and [columnist Michael] Goodwin, this is their way of defending Trump,” Cuomo continued.
The widely-read Goodwin has slammed the governor on several occasions for his handling of COVID-19 patients being sent back into nursing homes, including in a column last month that went viral at the time.
“If you are the governor of the state that is the national epicenter of the deadly outbreak, you don’t have the luxury of not knowing, or pretending not to know, about the horrendous carnage in nursing homes and rehabilitation centers,” Goodwin wrote. “And if your policies contributed to that carnage, the decent thing to do is to own your mistakes and fix them.”
Indeed, Cuomo was, at one time, mentioned prominently as a replacement Democratic candidate for president. He won universal praise for his handling of the pandemic.
But for all his press briefings and tell-it-like-it-is statements, nothing was happening. In fact, his disastrous policies led to twice as many deaths as any other state and nearly four times the number of fatalities of California.
I wrote in early May that it was all a sham. While liberal Democrats were begging Cuomo to step forward and take over for Joe Biden, I pointed out that “Gov. Andrew Cuomo Had the Worst Response to the Crisis of Any Governor in America”:
The panicky, sometimes hysterical New York governor began whining about the federal government (specifically the president) not doing anything to help the states with getting medical supplies. Back in March, he kept saying he needed 30-40,000 ventilators. And when Trump pointed out that was silly, he accused the president of being an unfeeling monster.
Where are those same liberals who touted Cuomo as the man who could beat Trump? They are tiptoeing away trying to avoid anyone noticing how incredibly stupid they were.
Cuomo is calling the 6,000 nursing home deaths and his responsibility for them “a distraction.”
“They don’t want to talk about the what the federal government did on the Covid, so they want to attack the Democrats for nursing home deaths,” Cuomo said. “It’s the same M.O., just distract, create a shiny object to take your attention off what they don’t want you to focus on. They done’t want to talk about the federal government’s response, or lack of response.”
Trump never got hysterical enough to beg for five times the number of ventilators that New York eventually got. Cuomo’s panicking also had the Navy dispatching a hospital ship that was barely used. New York built “field hospitals” that sat mostly empty. It’s unknown what kind of money was wasted in this fashion, but it certainly tops $100 million.
Cuomo’s nursing home policies are rightly being investigated by Congress. He is apparently refusing to turn over documents relating to the deaths and won’t testify. Maybe he hopes to dangle his own “shiny object” to distract the taxpayers from the massive amount of money he wasted and the huge number of deaths that could have been avoided.
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