House Minority Whip Steve Scalise refocused controversies surrounding Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo back to his handling of nursing homes during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic and brought President Biden into the fray.
“It’s not just the sexual harassment scandal, which is very concerning, but it’s also the scandal of what he did to seniors in nursing homes, starting with his order that went against federal CMS guidelines,” Scalise said in a press conference on Tuesday.
“I would call on President Biden to rescind his designation of Gov. Cuomo as the ‘gold standard’ for COVID leadership,” Scalise said. “That’s not the gold standard. That is an epic failure that led to the deaths of thousands of people, and Gov. Cuomo needs to come clean with the American people, with the people of New York.”
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The New York governor faces multiple sexual harassment complaints from former female staff members who went public in the last few weeks, prompting the state’s attorney general to launch an investigation into the claims.
That harassment claims come as reporting reveals the governor’s aides rewrote a report on nursing homes deaths to conceal the high number of deaths in the homes, which many argue were caused by Cuomo’s nursing home order.
The order, Scalise said, forced “seniors who were COVID-positive to go back into nursing homes and prohibited those nursing homes from testing for COVID. It led to thousands of deaths that should have never happened.”
Revelations about the nursing home issue put the president in an awkward spot. In April 2020, Biden said on a late-night television show that Cuomo has “done one hell of a job. I think he’s the gold standard.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki last month dodged questions about whether the president still considers Cuomo the “gold standard” on handling the coronavirus pandemic.
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Scalise noted that House Republicans have long looked at the issue of New York nursing home deaths linked to Cuomo’s order.
“The select subcommittee of coronavirus Republicans back in June started asking Gov. Cuomo for the data. He refused back then,” Scalise said. “Called us names. Seems to have a pattern of bullying. But he never gave those families an answer.”
