New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is capitalizing on his media favor by writing a book bragging about his leadership in this pandemic, despite his horrible nursing home order. Months later, many in the media are finally waking up and asking him about this disastrous directive. On today's New Day, CNN host Alisyn Camerota repeatedly asked him about it, but she let the Democrat deny facts and blame President Trump without fact-checking him.
Camerota didn't wait long to bring up the nursing home scandal. She started off with this gentle question: "Do you wish that you had done something differently on that?" similar to what CBS asked the governor yesterday.
Of course Cuomo immediately and repeatedly blamed the federal government for his state far surpassing any other state in the country in COVID deaths. After claiming Trump spread misinformation about where the virus came from and asymptomatic spread, he called the nursing home order scandal "political propaganda" from the White House:
On the nursing homes you have to separate the political propaganda from the facts here. The White House has been very good at blaming democratic governors for deaths in nursing homes. People did die in nursing homes and it was terrible, but that's where this virus preys on the old and the weak, there was never a directive in New York state that said nursing homes must accept COVID-positive patients. That's political propaganda. We said -- we did follow a federal rule that said you can't discriminate against people who have COVID, not in a hospital, not in a nursing home.
Camerota did push back, noting it wasn't just Republicans but also a New York Democrat assemblyman who had criticized his leadership:
"You're saying that you -- let me be clear. Your Department of Health and or you didn't tell hospitals to send patients back to nursing homes? Because it's not just Republicans, governor," she began, citing the assemblyman. But Cuomo deflected and blamed Trump again:
"Yeah, no, look, the White House is very good at spreading misinformation," he touted adding, "We never in the state told the nursing home, you have to accept the Covid-positive person. Never happened," he denied.
If it never happened, then why was the March 25th order, conveniently scrubbed from his state's health department website two months later?
The March 25th Directive from Governor Cuomo’s Health Department: https://t.co/o0lN2sHvzw pic.twitter.com/xUjQyh8TYM
— Bryan Llenas (@BryanLlenas) October 14, 2020
Instead of correcting the governor, CNN let Cuomo double down on his deception yet again with this carefully worded reply: (click expand)
CAMEROTA: There was never an instruction given to hospitals that nursing home patients had to leave and go back to nursing homes and you're saying there was never an instruction to nursing homes that they had to take them?
CUOMO: There was never a point in time where we needed beds and said to a nursing home you must take a Covid-positive person. The law is exactly the opposite, Alisyn. The law in this state says a nursing home may not accept a person unless they can care for that person and do it without endangering the other people in the facility...it never happened....
No smarmy fact-checks from the hosts or CNN's Daniel Dale followed this segment. Instead, Camerota concluded the interview by agreeing with Cuomo that Trump was "cruel" to make families believe the Democrat was to blame (click expand):
CUOMO: [T]he White House is very good at misinformation and a lot of people believe the president still, you know, it's a great title, president, and people think you're supposed to believe the president. They are very good at spreading misinformation and it was mean and it was cruel because it's bad enough to lose a loved one, when you're then told, well, maybe you didn't have to lose that loved one, that really makes the pain even worse.
CAMEROTA: Definitely. I mean, obviously. And that's what we have heard from lots of loved ones of nursing home patients who ended up dying.
By contrast when the governor was on MSNBC’s Morning Joe before this, co-host Willie Geist wouldn’t let that lie slide. He confronted Cuomo and forced him to “take responsibility” for the nursing home deaths in his state.
.@WillieGeist does a great job following up, pointing out the March 25th order Cuomo signed.
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) October 14, 2020
Cuomo dodges again, blames “cruel” and “reprehensible” Trump comments for creating perception he did anything wrong. pic.twitter.com/Sla99vXT2W
But perhaps getting the same grilling from the network that employs his brother is too much to ask.
CNN treating Democrat governors with kid gloves was paid for by advertisers Liberty Mutual and USAA which you can contact by following the links listed.
The relevant transcript is below:
CNN New Day
10/14/2020
8:21am EST
ALISYN CAMEROTA: One of the things you address in your book is the criticism that you got about the deaths in nursing homes and the directive from you or your department of health that sick COVID patients had to be transferred out of hospitals to nursing homes. Do you wish that you had done something differently on that?
ANDREW CUOMO: Well, I wish I had done things differently on the entire situation, right? I wish what we know now we knew when it started. I wish that we knew that it actually was not a China virus, it was a European virus and it came from France and Italy and it had been coming here for months before the federal government told us. I wish that we told there was asymptomatic spread. I wish I had done masks earlier, even though we were the first state in the nation to do it, we should have done it even earlier. On the nursing homes you have to separate the political propaganda from the facts here. The White House has been very good at blaming democratic governors for deaths in nursing homes. People did die in nursing homes and it was terrible, but that's where this virus preys on the old and the weak, there was never a directive in New York state that said nursing homes must accept Covid-positive patients. That's political propaganda. We said -- we did follow a federal rule that said you can't discriminate against people who have Covid, not in a hospital, not in a nursing home.
CAMEROTA: You're saying that you -- let me be clear. Your department of health and or you didn't tell hospitals to send patients back to nursing homes? Because it's not just Republicans, governor, I mean, as you know, there's Democrats, there is a democratic assemblyman who says for me the biggest question still remains is who made the call to transfer the patients and the impact of transferring those patients back and forth. So that's -- I mean, look, I could go on. There's obviously patient’s family members who think that that was a directive from your office.
CUOMO: Yeah, no, look, the White House is very good at spreading misinformation, but here are the facts, the directive was a federal directive that said you can't discriminate against a person because of Covid. We never in the state told the nursing home, you have to accept the Covid-positive person. Never happened.
CAMEROTA: But where else could they have gone? If they were being taken out of hospital because hospitals were being overrun, then where else could they have gone?
CUOMO: Good question. Hospitals were never overwhelmed. We always had excess capacity in hospitals. We always had excess capacity in emergency hospitals that we built. So we were never in a situation where we had to have a nursing home accept a Covid-positive person.
CAMEROTA: There was never an instruction given to hospitals that nursing home patients had to leave and go back to nursing homes and you're saying there was never an instruction to nursing homes that they had to take them?
CUOMO: There was never a point in time where we needed beds and said to a nursing home you must take a Covid-positive person. The law is exactly the opposite, Alisyn. The law in this state says a nursing home may not accept a person unless they can care for that person and do it without endangering the other people in the facility. So we never got to the point -- other states have, we didn't in New York -- we never got to the point where we had a scarcity of beds. We only had 18,000 people in our hospitals at the end of the day. We have a 50,000-bed capacity. We had thousands of extra emergency beds. So it never happened. But the point you make is right, the White House is very good at misinformation and a lot of people believe the president still, you know, it's a great title, president, and people think you're supposed to believe the president. They are very good at spreading misinformation and it was mean and it was cruel because it's bad enough to lose a loved one, when you're then told, well, maybe you didn't have to lose that loved one, that really makes the pain even worse.
CAMEROTA: Definitely. I mean, obviously. And that's what we have heard from lots of loved ones of nursing home patients who ended up dying. Governor Cuomo, we are out of time. Thank you very much for all of the information. Again, the book is American Crisis, and we’ll talk to you again very soon.
