The week isn’t even over and already New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has threatened a Democrat colleague, attacked nurses and nursing home staff, lashed out at the federal government, and attacked his “critics” for spreading “disinformation” and “conspiracy theories” about that time he literally conspired to hide easily avoidable deaths he caused. Things aren’t looking good for him.
This, we’re told by his new enemies in corporate media, is what Democratic accountability looks like. But is it?
On March 25, Cuomo ordered COVID-19 patients into elderly care facilities and barred staff from even testing them before entry. Nine days later, he pushed a provision barring families from suing nursing homes over COVID deaths, hiding it in a monstrous spending bill.
Six days after that, he barred nursing homes from sending COVID patients to the nearly empty naval hospital ship anchored outside Manhattan and the sprawling Javits Center field hospital. Eight days later, the first deaths began to trickle out, although families would have to wait months for the full toll. Still, Cuomo said nursing homes “don’t have a right to object.”
At first, Cuomo denied knowing anything about the order, but on May 10 — more than six weeks after his initial order — he relented under public pressure and rescinded it.
Did he ever take blame? No, and for nearly a year we’ve been treated to lie after lie. First, he blamed the federal government for the deaths in New York, saying, “The reason that happened was because we had the virus coming from Europe when the federal government told us the virus was coming from China.”
Over the next year, he would blame nursing home staff (for bringing the COVID in), President Donald Trump (for being “cruel” by pinning it on him), the Department of Justice (for “conspiracy theories”) and even his fellow governors (“You have 45 other states to point fingers at first”).
At one point, he claimed he didn’t even sign the order at all (“I hate to get technical with you”). Also, that whole COVID patients sent to nursing homes thing? “It never happened.” Just in case, though, he made clear he wouldn’t be cooperating with any investigations.
And what did the corporate media do? They got creepy, worshipping him like something between a savior and a manipulative boyfriend.
SUPERCUT!
Major media take turns massaging @NYGovCuomo's feet pic.twitter.com/751VxGBh1m
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 28, 2021
While Fox News weatherwoman Janice Dean loudly and publicly accused Cuomo of complicity in the deaths of both of her in-laws, her colleagues at leftist outlets thanked him for his leadership. While The Federalist, New York Post, Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and Daily Caller demanded answers, Hollywood’s Academy of Television Arts and Science awarded him an Emmy “in recognition of his leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic and his masterful use of TV to inform and calm people around the world.” While families were lied to in a now exposed political cover-up, they complimented his book on “Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Transparency, the book teaches is, is key.
“Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York wrote the book on pandemic leadership, literally,” began a Wednesday New York Times article on the governor admitting “mistakes on nursing-home deaths.” “He won an International Emmy for his TV briefings during the outbreak’s early months. Now, his self-created image as America’s Covid-19 governor may be threatened by his efforts to protect it.”
“Self-created”? The myth of Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, Master of Pandemics, Destroyer of Trump, Boyfriend of America didn’t create itself: It was the creation of U.S. media — the very people whose job is to ask questions instead of taking transcripts at press conferences, book releases, and award shows. The people whose job is to be skeptical and hold politicians accountable for their lies and manipulations. The people their audiences ostensibly read to learn the truth.
“We made a mistake in creating the void,” Cuomo said at a Monday press conference. “When we didn’t provide information, it allowed press people, cynics, politicians to fill the void. When you don’t correct disinformation, you allow it to continue.”
Emmys, at least, are for acting. But for the men and women of CNN, NBC, ABC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Reuters, AP, and PolitiFact, there is no excuse.
