On Tuesday morning’s New Day, CNN host John Berman brought on national security analyst Juliette Kayyem to discuss the recent uptick of coronavirus cases in Florida. In the segment, Kayyem praised New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, for his “leadership” in fighting COVID-19 within his state. She also bashed Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, for not being an effective leader.
Berman began his questioning of Kayyem by comparing Florida to New York:
That's a five-fold increase in ten days, just to give people a sense of how quickly things are accelerating in Florida and how fast things have changed. I want to give people another sense of how Florida looks compared to another state we talked a lot about over the last three months, and that's New York. Just look at this. You can see in purple there, that's the New York cases going down, down, down, down, down. In Florida, in green, is this really rapid increase, Juliette, and that tells a story.
This was a preposterous comparison, as New York has far more coronavirus deaths than Florida. New York has the most COVID deaths of any state at 30,934 deaths, while Florida has 3,172 deaths. Furthermore, New York has had over three times as many total cases as Florida, at 393,257 cases to 100,209 cases. Per a thousand people, New York has had 159 deaths, while Florida has only had 15.
Kayyem then made her ridiculous defense of Cuomo and assault on DeSantis:
Yeah, it tells a story, essentially, of, of leadership, I think, at this stage. For a long time, Governor Cuomo in New York I think has aggressively, even if belated, tried to fight the virus statewide. In other words, statewide rules that were trying to drill down, bring down the number, save the hospitals, and also have surge capacity. What you've seen from DeSantis, the governor of Florida, is essentially a lot like Trump, just sort of ignore the problem, we can handle it, not a big deal, no statewide rules, no statewide orders, and then, then you start to see the numbers.
Cuomo has hardly been a model of effective leadership. His disastrous March 25th order to send recovering coronavirus patients to nursing homes resulted in 6,200 deaths in nursing homes. Some even estimate that he was responsible for around 12,000 nursing home deaths.
Despite his deadly blunder, the media has refused to hold Cuomo accountable, and like Kayyem, has praised his efforts to fight the coronavirus. On the other hand, the media has attacked DeSantis for making Florida one of the first states to reopen. This explains Berman and Kayyem’s gleeful tone while describing the increase of cases in Florida.
Attacking Trump’s handling of coronavirus in comparison to Cuomo was also outrageous. Trump sent New York 400 ventilators, many of which were never used.
Kayyem’s attack on DeSantis and Trump for wanting to reopen the economy is absurd. How dare they want people to be able to go out, support local businesses, work, and make a living! Would she rather the 46 million Americans who have lost their jobs due to coronavirus remain unemployed?
Kayyem continued the media’s penchant for praising Democrats like Cuomo and bashing Republicans like DeSantis in midst of the pandemic.
The full June 23rd transcript is here:
CNN New Day
06/23/20
6:12:13 AM
JOHN BERMAN: That's a five-fold increase in ten days, just to give people a sense of how quickly things are accelerating in Florida and how fast things have changed. I want to give people another sense of how Florida looks compared to another state we talked a lot about over the last three months, and that's New York. Just look at this. You can see in purple there, that's the New York cases going down, down, down, down, down. In Florida, in green, is this really rapid increase, Juliette, and that tells a story.
JULIETTE KAYYEM (CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST): Yeah, it tells a story, essentially, of, of leadership, I think, at this stage. For a long time, Governor Cuomo in New York I think has aggressively, even if belated, tried to fight the virus statewide. In other words, statewide rules that were trying to drill down, bring down the number, save the hospitals, and also have surge capacity. What you've seen from DeSantis, the governor of Florida, is essentially a lot like Trump, just sort of ignore the problem, we can handle it, not a big deal, no statewide rules, no statewide orders, and then, then you start to see the numbers. And so, what I'm looking at now is these governors who had sort of been living in the dark. What you're starting to see is them recognizing they actually don't have a handle on this, the doctor was mentioning the numbers. And you're starting to see cities within these states and counties begin to enforce masking orders, because it's really the only tool left at this stage to try to protect the population that's already out and about.
