As a companion to “Blame it on Gay Ray” I submit Bill Hammond’s New York Post column taking us inside the Cuomo con: “Cuomo’s ‘blame Trump’ story for the nursing-home coverup doesn’t remotely add up.” Here we go:
To justify deceiving the world about the scale of the pandemic in New York’s nursing homes, Gov. Cuomo has turned to a familiar scapegoat: Donald Trump. The story doesn’t add up at all.
Cuomo’s administration recently and grudgingly admitted under court order that more than 15,000 residents of the state’s long-term care facilities died of COVID-19 over the past year — which is 6,000 more than the state had previously acknowledged.
In a private meeting on Wednesday, angry state legislators asked why this fact and others had been withheld from them and the public for so long. Cuomo’s top aide, Melissa DeRosa, answered:
“President Trump turns this into a giant political football. . . . He starts tweeting that we killed everyone in nursing homes,” she said, according to a recording first obtained by The Post.
“He directs the Department of Justice to do an investigation into us. . . . And, basically, we froze, because then we were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice or what we give to you guys . . . was going to be used against us.” (Emphasis added.)
This statement — which DeRosa has confirmed to be accurate — is astonishing on many levels. She was effectively confessing to a months-long coverup involving both the governor’s office and the Health Department. She specifically cited concern about a federal investigation and political blowback. And she presented that as if it were a legitimate rationale for hiding public records from duly elected members of the Legislature, not to mention everyone else.
An even bigger problem: Her explanation doesn’t wash with the facts.
Whole thing here.
Say what you or I will about John Weaver, Steve Schmidt, and the other grifters of the Lincoln Project, they can all take a lesson or two from Cuomo. They lack the gall to peddle a book like Cuomo’s American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic.
And they never hauled in an Emmy for their ritual appearances on cable television. “In November,” let us recall, “Cuomo stressed the importance of honesty while facing adversity when he received his Emmy during a virtual ceremony at which he was feted by celebrities Robert De Niro, Ben Stiller, Billy Joel, Spike Lee, Rosie Perez and Billy Crystal.”
When it comes to political fraud, Andrew Cuomo takes the cake. He seems to have served as something of an inspiration for the gentleman from Madame Tussauds, who is serving up the crumbs from Cuomo’s cake — Biden previously held him out as “sort of the gold standard” — though the White House has now gone mum on this point.
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