When New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) won an Emmy for his COVID press briefings back in November, no one knew how ironic the award would turn out to be. Three months later, Americans are finding out just how big of a performance Cuomo gave. A killer one, some would say. Now, knee-deep into a nursing home scandal that liberals are surprisingly silent about, we’re learning just how much of an act his concern for New Yorkers really was.
Even after his decision to send infected COVID patients to nursing homes, Cuomo never apologized. The action, which created an uproar on both sides of the aisle, led to a massive outbreak of the virus — and the deaths of more than 13,297 seniors. Thursday, almost a year later, Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa finally apologized for the move — but not to families. No, her concern was for any political inconvenience. In the bombshell video call with the governor’s party, she told Democrats, “I do understand the position that you were put in. I know that it is not fair. It was not our intention to put you in that political position with the Republicans… So we do apologize.”
In one of the more explosive revelations of the meeting, DeRosa admits that there was, in fact, a massive coverup — which, naturally, she blames on Donald Trump. His tweets, she said, that “we killed everyone in nursing homes” panicked the governor’s team. Terrified of a DOJ investigation, they hid the numbers — downplaying them by an astonishing 43 percent. “Basically, we froze,” she explained. “We weren’t sure… [what] was going to be used against us,” DeRosa told the lawmakers. “That played a very large role into this.” Even Democrats, who took a beating for Cuomo’s reckless decision in 2020, didn’t seem to be in a forgiving mood. State Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Queens), whose uncle died of COVID in a New York nursing home, said the apology didn’t go far enough. “It’s not enough how contrite they are with us,” he said. “They need to show that to the public and the families — and they haven’t done that.”
All they cared about, he told reporters later, was ‘dodg[ing]… any incriminating evidence.” “They had to first make sure that the state was protected against federal investigation.” Kim shook his head. “That’s how I understand their reasoning of why they were unable to share, in real time, the data.” Other Democrats, like State Senator Andrew Gounardes, blasted Cuomo, arguing, “This is a betrayal of the public trust. There needs to be full accountability for what happened.”
Not surprisingly, MSNBC and CNN couldn’t be bothered to cover the firestorm. Despite all that’s happened, Cuomo continues to get a free pass from the press on a decision that would have landed any other Republican in jail. Now, the governor is headed to Washington, D.C., where he can personally thank President Biden for burying the case. “All signs point to they are not looking at this,” DeRosa tried to assure Democrats Thursday. “They’ve dropped it.”
New Yorkers, on the other hand, have not. In a gut-wrenching column for USA Today this week, one of the victim’s daughters, Tracey Alvino, accused the governor of running from his part in her dad’s death.
“Governor Cuomo called his handling of the coronavirus ‘beautiful.’ My dad being placed on a ventilator wasn’t beautiful. My brother sleeping in the hospital parking lot just so he could be close to Dad wasn’t beautiful… Standing by helpless while Dad’s organs failed one-by-one, wasn’t beautiful… Comforting my grieving mother every single day because she doesn’t want dad to be dead isn’t beautiful. Hearing Cuomo blame these deaths on God, former President Donald Trump, Mother Nature, the media, the nursing home staff, and arguably even the nursing home patients themselves, wasn’t beautiful.”
Cuomo, meanwhile, hasn’t exactly helped his cause — lashing out a reporter after a damning report came out of the state’s attorney general’s office late last month. “Who cares,” he fired back in a fiery press conference. “Who cares [if they] died in the hospital, died in a nursing home? They died.”
From anyone else, his callousness might be shocking. But then again, this is the governor who lit up the Empire State Building in pink to celebrate legal infanticide in New York. Like most radical liberals, his cold disregard for life doesn’t end in the womb. It’s a war against human dignity that is driven by a utilitarian view of life. “Who cares?” That’s all the feeling liberals can muster when it comes to anyone who doesn’t add value to their world.