During “Rise Up New York,” a star-studded telethon raising money for the Robin Hood Foundation’s COVID-19 relief fund, Jimmy Fallon thanked New York’s Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo for his coronavirus response while bashing President Trump.
In Fallon’s “comedy” segment called “Thank You Notes,” he thanked Cuomo for his “sterling example of leadership.”
“Thank you Andrew Cuomo for being a sterling example of leadership during this rough time. Though, in all fairness, the high bar for leadership right now is not telling people to drink bleach,” Fallon said.
When referencing people drinking bleach, Fallon was referring to a comment Trump made regarding household cleaners that the mainstream media took out of context.
In actuality Cuomo has failed New York state in many ways.
At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, Cuomo and the mainstream media attacked Trump and insisted New York needed an additional 30,000 ventilators. Models from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation show New York likely reached its peak ventilator usage on April 8, the day it used 5,0008 ventilators.
Cuomo was entirely focused on securing 25,000 more ventilators than necessary, meanwhile, he alleged did not know he signed an advisory for hospitals to discharge elderly patients with COVID-19 back to nursing homes. The advisory was built to combat alleged discrimination of those diagnosed with coronavirus.
New York Department of Health Commissioner Howard Zucker told the New York Times nursing homes in New York are not permitted to “discriminate” against coronavirus patients. Cuomo and his administration thought fighting alleged “coronavirus discrimination” was more important than fighting the actual coronavirus itself.
According to the New York Times’s latest analysis of the coronavirus, the disease has plagued nursing home and elderly care facilities in a disproportionate manner, killing upwards of 10,500 residents and staff in such facilities nationwide. That’s nearly one-fifth of the U.S. coronavirus death total. Yet, Cuomo let elderly patients re-enter nursing homes, likely prolonging the spread of coronavirus in the U.S. epicenter.
Cuomo’s work is far from what anyone would deem a “sterling example of leadership.”
Celebrities like Fallon are at the forefront of the conversation about coronavirus. They enter the homes of millions via television in the name of performance or charity and leave Americans with a skewed vision of reality.
According to “Rise Up New York!” and Fallon, Cuomo’s leadership deserves the utmost respect and praise. The data shows that’s simply not true. In reality, Cuomo’s work has failed to stop the spread of COVID-19 in New York, particularly among the most vulnerable population in nursing homes.
