IN ANDREW CUOMO, CORONAVIRUS, MEDIA
I took a whack at Governor Cuomo last week in “Blame it on the Donald.” An update is warranted. At another of his press conferences yesterday he dispersed the blame for his own shoddy performance across an incredibly broad landscape.
Victor Davis Hanson took up Governor Cuomo in his February 14 American Greatness column “The wages of Trump hatred.” Here is a handy summary of events leading to yesterday’s presser:
Cuomo may have had the second-worst record of any governor in the United States, in terms of deaths per million from the virus (currently 2,361 per million New York residents, second to next-door New Jersey). He may have shut down his state, dr[iven] out millions to seek refuge elsewhere, ruined New York’s economy, and yet suffered more deaths and inflicted more damage on his own than a similarly sized, open, and economically rebounding Florida and Texas. Still, Cuomo had one advantage those red-state governors lacked: a large left-wing media platform to blast the hated Trump.
Now, again mysteriously, after the inauguration of Joe Biden, we learn the sordid details about Cuomo, in the fashion revelations appear daily and simultaneously about the Lincoln Project. It was known long ago that Cuomo, in a panic about the epidemic, had shuttled infected patients into the state’s extended care homes—and by executive fiat—where they proved mobile Petri dishes, infecting vulnerable residents, who began dying en masse.
Cuomo might have stopped the awful practice. He might have announced the accurate number of the dead to highlight the need to end immediately the lunatic diversions. Instead, we now learn he ordered his aides to hide the lethality figures. If he was blasted for 8,000 rest home deaths, then what, he feared, would be the public reaction at the true figure of 15,000 dead?
Would the president whom he demagogued now demagogue him? So Cuomo lied. He hid the grim data from a media all too eager before November 3 to comply. He lied to the New York state legislature. He lied to the U.S. Department of Justice. He lied to the public. And he assumed these were all “noble lies”—necessary for the good cause of ending Donald Trump.
I have posted the video of Cuomo’s press conference yesterday below in its entirety. Cuomo looks like he’s morphing into Richard Nixon in the dark days of Watergate, though Nixon never had a compliant media contingent or the support of a cultural elite. The New York Post has nevertheless distinguished itself with its clear-eyed news and editorial coverage. Today the Post’s news pages give us “Democrats slam ‘lying’ Cuomo over COVID-19 nursing home ‘cover-up’” and “FAIL! Majority of voters flunk Cuomo’s handling of COVID nursing home deaths.”
Over on the Post’s opinion pages columnist Michael Goodwin has more in “Gov. Cuomo’s ‘heartless’ distortions can’t hide truth.” Seth Barron adds to the press point VDH makes above in the Post column “Adoring media served as protective cloak for Cuomo’s COVID lies.” The Post’s editors have more here.
The Post has flooded the Cuomo zone. Beyond the Post, however, Mediaite’s Josh Feldman compiled the running commentary of a passionate observer in “Fox’s Janice Dean Torches Cuomo as She Live-Tweets Presser: ‘Same Old Nonsense Lies… We Are Not Confused, Governor.’”
Video via Governor Cuomo Updates New Yorkers on State’s Progress During COVID-19 Pandemic.
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