The best thing about being a Democratic official is that you get two press shops: The one provided by your office and the one provided by corporate media.
CNN’s John King concluded an interview with Andrew Cuomo on Friday by asking the New York governor, of all people, to advise certain red states and California on what they can do better to combat the coronavirus pandemic.
Yes, we are apparently asking the governor whose nursing homes have had more people die of the virus than have died in all of Alaska, Wyoming, Hawaii, Montana, Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, West Virginia, Maine, Idaho, Utah, Oregon, Nebraska, Kansas, Arkansas, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Delaware, New Mexico, Kentucky, Nevada, Iowa, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia combined for advice on how to defeat COVID-19.
“I have your time, and I want to use your experience,” said King. “You are watching right now, Florida, 12,000 cases-plus today. They’ve been around 10,000 or 12,000. Texas, Arizona, California — as you watch this play out now in other states — nationally, the positivity rate is 8%. In Arizona, it is above 20%. In Florida, it has been around 19%. You’re below 1% in the state of New York now.”
He added, “What is your advice to these governors, most of them Republicans, but Gavin Newsom out of California, a Democrat, as they go through what you have lived?”
Cuomo began first by blaming the federal government.
“You want to talk about a national tragedy?” the governor asked. “None of this had to be.”
He added, “There are two fundamental points. You have people who are in denial, is the first issue. That is compounded by this division across the country, lack of unity, and then you have, secondarily, government incompetence. It’s both factors. In New York, we had to get the people to understand the facts and how serious it was. We had to put aside the politics. I had them focus on the facts, on the science. I did it every day. And New Yorkers got it.”
Oh, New Yorkers “got it” all right.
King interjected at that point to push for clarity, “When you say there’s government incompetence, in the here and now, as you watch this play out across the country — you saying the governor of Florida is incompetent? The governor of Texas is incompetent? The governor of California’s incompetent? Or is this all a federal thing for you?”
Cuomo, whose gross mismanagement and all-around incompetence coincided with New York becoming the COVID-19 death capital in the United States, responded, saying, “I think it’s all across the board on different levels, right? And the history books will decide or the voters of a state will decide, right? … You have certain states that I think have acted adequately and certain states that have not.”
There were no questions about New York’s nursing homes. There were no questions about Cuomo’s social distancing double standards. There were no questions about the Cuomo administration’s efforts to blame healthcare workers for the staggering death toll in New York’s long-term care facilities. Nothing. It was praise and chumminess all the way down on CNN for New York’s governor, whose state has a coronavirus fatality rate worse than the next two hardest-hit states combined.
With news media like this, who even needs a press shop?
