A few months ago New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo wrote a book about his pandemic leadership skills and titled it, "American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic." But Fox News senior meteorologist Janice Dean's rebuttal may be more compelling. This weekend she published a piece for Fox News entitled, "The Tragic Rise of Andrew Cuomo Amid Covid-19 - A Real American Crisis," in which she explains in detail how the governor failed New Yorkers this year, including her own in-laws.
Dean first reminded us of the context surrounding Cuomo's book launch.
"New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s 'leadership' memoir 'American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic' was written and promoted in 2020 while over 30,000 New Yorkers died from the coronavirus (the largest number of deaths of any state) with an overwhelming percentage of those deaths coming from residents in nursing homes," she writes.
Cuomo has still not provided a more accurate number of the state's COVID-related nursing home deaths to the Justice Department. As the Associated Press noted, Cuomo's initial report of 6,600 nursing home deaths appeared to be a severe undercount. But we do know that two of those fatalities were Dean's mother in-law and father in-law, Mickey and Dee Newman, who died in separate New York elder care facilities.
Dean explains that she and countless other New Yorkers could have forgiven the governor if he had at least shown some compassion or accepted some responsibility. Cuomo's March 25 mandate forcing nursing homes to accept recovering COVID patients, for instance, put the vulnerable at even greater risk.
"Had the governor admitted his terrible decisions instead of making posters, plastic mountains and coronavirus artwork, many of us would’ve forgiven him," she notes. "Had he written condolence cards instead of books about 'leadership' I probably would not be speaking up on behalf of other grieving families."
On Twitter, Dean revealed that she had reached out to Gov. Cuomo's office before publishing the op-ed. They responded by asking her producer to provide the exact date her in-laws died and what nursing home they were in.
The Daily Caller obtained a curt and accusatory message from Cuomo's office.
“A news organization reached out for a comment Sunday evening to an op-ed and when asked for context or details they wouldn’t provide it. The only bullying here is in someone else’s head,” said Cuomo spokesperson Caitlin Girouard.
Pretty confident this qualifies as bullying but that’s just me. https://t.co/uZXJrwYSZW
— Janice Dean (@JaniceDean) January 4, 2021
"Cuomo is certainly good at giving out advice but fails miserably when it comes to following it," Dean writes. She pledged to continue the fight to hold Cuomo accountable.