ABC News landed an interview with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and it avoided asking the governor about his nursing homes order.
ABC News headlined its Cuomo interview coverage, “100 days in ‘hell’: Gov. Andrew Cuomo on his pandemic performance.” ABC News reporter Amy Robach asked Cuomo questions on a wide variety of subjects, such as his timetable to reopen the state’s public schools, his recollection of the first 100 days of the coronavirus pandemic, and how he personally dealt with the stress of his political office. He acknowledged that he does not have a timetable to reopen New York’s schools, and he called the first 100 days of the pandemic “hell.”
But ABC News did not press Cuomo on some of his policy and administrative failures during the pandemic, such as his controversial nursing homes order. Cuomo issued a statewide order that forced state nursing homes to admit coronavirus-positive patients into their facilities. It was intended to give coronavirus patients access to quality health care and treatment, but critics claimed his order led to more coronavirus cases and deaths in nursing homes. ABC News did not ask a single question about nursing homes and also why his office reversed the nursing homes order weeks later.
The toughest question Cuomo was asked in the course of the interview was whether he acted too slowly in shutting down the state. Cuomo blamed the federal government for not recognizing that the virus came from China and Europe, and the federal government did not shut down flights from Europe to New York until it was too late.
“It was just a terrible blunder, frankly,” Cuomo said.
Cuomo also added that he shouldered the pain of the loss of New Yorkers from the coronavirus, but assured ABC News that his office did the best it could. “New Yorkers who died did not die because we failed them,” he said. He later added, “In New York, we’ve lost people, but we did not lose anyone who we did not give the best medical care to.”
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