Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was combative and defensive as members of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic fired questions at him Tuesday, asking about his devastating COVID nursing home policies, which many argue led to needless deaths. Our Ward Clark previewed the session:
During the COVID-19 panic, one of the more baffling actions taken by a government official anywhere in the country was New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s placing COVID patients in the populations that were at the very highest risk for not just COVID but any respiratory ailment, namely, nursing homes.
Cuomo’s administration was accused of drastically undercounting its nursing home fatalities:
A report released in March 2022 by the New York state comptroller found Cuomo’s Health Department “was not transparent in its reporting of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes” and it “understated the number of deaths at nursing homes by as much as 50%” during some points of the pandemic.
Not surprisingly, Cuomo blamed everybody else, including former President Trump:
In his opening remarks, Cuomo said “any serious review must stop asking political questions and start asking fact-based ones.” He pointed out that New York was “No. 39 in terms of pro rata nursing home deaths [despite the state] being ground zero for COVID.”
He also accused the Trump administration of targeting Democrat-led states “despite both red and blue states issuing” the same guidelines.
He was even more combative afterward, telling a journalist:
“We have two very different opinions on what happened during COVID,” Cuomo told a reporter. “I think the federal government failed this nation. And it was abysmal. How did COVID get to the U.S. in December and nobody knew? How did it take so many months before we had … basic testing in place? How did we have a president running around saying, ‘It’s going to be gone when the weather gets warm?’ … who then admits to a reporter that he purposely downplayed it?”
Members of the committee, however, were not impressed with the man once known as the Love Gov and found him arrogant—something he’s been accused of plenty of times before:
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The committee sent several tweets after the hearing describing how Cuomo refused to take accountability and lacked basic human empathy:
✔️Mr. Cuomo was shockingly callous when discussing New York’s nursing home mortality rate.
He testified, “6500 vs. 9000 [deaths] — What is the difference?”
— Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic (@COVIDSelect) June 12, 2024
Not my fault, Cuomo said:
✔️Mr. Cuomo testified that he only regretted the March 25, 2020 order because nursing homes were “confused by it.”
He attributed any criticism of the policy and any confusion surrounding the directive to merely a public relations issue.
— Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic (@COVIDSelect) June 12, 2024
Fox News’ Janice Dean, whose in-laws died in nursing homes under Cuomo’s dangerous policy, was disgusted.
#neverforget #whocaresthreydied @andrewcuomo https://t.co/RyoHc7noH5 pic.twitter.com/RpNDoMk4v7
— Janice Dean (@JaniceDean) June 12, 2024
The committee’s tweet thread ended with, “We will continue to follow the facts wherever they lead and hold the Cuomo Administration to account.” While I applaud their efforts to expose the truth, the reality is that seemingly nobody has been held accountable for the disastrous, draconian policies laid down not just in New York but in California, Michigan, Illinois… far too many locales to list. To date, Fauci hasn’t been held accountable, nor Newsom or Whitmer or Walensky or Ferrer or Inslee… or anybody.
At least some truths are coming out of these investigations, but sadly that’s likely all we’re ever going to get.
