No media outlet has been more dogged in its attempt to keep New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo accountable during his myriad scandals over the last year than the New York Post.
With every stage of Cuomo’s nursing home COVID death scandal — from the governor’s order to send COVID-positive patients into nursing homes to his underreporting of death data to his aide’s admission of a cover-up to his threatening of those who would call him out — the Post has been there to report it (as well as allegations of sexual harassment and bullying of journalists and fellow politicians).
And what did they get for their trouble?
The governor blamed the paper for the nursing home scandal.
As the paper pointed out in a Friday editorial, when Cuomo was asked about criticism of the nursing home issue over the summer, he responded:
I believe it is a political issue. I think it’s The New York Post, I think it’s Michael Goodwin, I think it’s Bob McManus, I think it’s Fox TV. I think it is all politically motivated. If anybody looked at the facts, they would know that it was wholly absurd on its face. People died in nursing homes. That’s very unfortunate. Just on the top line, we are number 35th in the nation in percentage of deaths in nursing homes. Go talk to 34 other states first. Go talk to the Republican states now. Florida, Texas, Arizona. Ask them what is happening in nursing homes. It’s all politics.
Then came Thursday night, when a blistering New York Times report revealed that Cuomo’s office rewrote a report to edit nursing home death numbers months before the feds began their investigation and put the lie to Cuomo’s rhetoric — and the Post made sure to let everyone know.
“We now know why New York was 35th in the nation” in COVID deaths, the Post wrote in its editorial. “Cuomo was engaged in a criminal coverup to hide the true numbers.”
And why was the governor hiding the numbers? The Post knows why: The truth would eviscerate Cuomo’s “entire facade of competent leadership” at the same time he was writing “a self-congratulatory book.”
“Cuomo lied. He falsified reports,” the Post said. “Then he blamed us, saying it was all ‘politically motivated.'”
With all of the investigations of COVID deaths and sexual harassment, the governor, the Post said, is going back to his usual reaction: “Bullying, filibustering. … He swears he’s innocent.”
“But he’s proven himself a liar over and over again,” the Post concluded. “How can any New Yorker ever believe a word he says?”