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.
Click here to sign up for pro-life news alerts from LifeNews.com
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:
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.
Cuomo dodges again, blames “cruel” and “reprehensible” Trump comments for creating perception he did anything wrong. pic.twitter.com/Sla99vXT2W
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) October 14, 2020
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.
LifeNews Note: Kristine Marsh is Staff Writer for MRC Culture at the Media Research Center where this originally appeared.
