During the virtual Democratic National Convention tonight, New York governor Andrew Cuomo had the temerity to tell a national audience that, “Our way worked. And it was beautiful.”
The shameless and vulgar self-aggrandizing — which he’s only able to get away with because of criminal lack of media scrutiny — didn’t end there, as Cuomo went on to say idiotic things like, “in many ways, COVID is just a metaphor” and “COVID is the symptom, not the illness.”
It’s important to keep reminding Americans that there is no leader in the United States — or anywhere in the free world, for that matter — who did a worse job preserving life than the governor of New York. Cuomo was late to enact preventative measure and also downplayed the virus, just like the president he criticizes. I can’t think of a single instance in American political history when exhibiting this level of deadly incompetence has been given a pass. The illness, not the metaphor, killed 35,000 New Yorkers. It was Cuomo’s personal mistake, an executive order forcing nursing homes in his state to accept patients who tested positive for the coronavirus in March, that sent thousands to their deaths. The Associated Press puts the real number of nursing home deaths close to 11,000 — more than the total fatality count in any state other than New Jersey.
“Beautiful,” indeed.