During a press conference on Monday regarding the ongoing scandal over nursing home COVID-19 deaths in his state, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo refused to apologize and attributed the situation to “disinformation” and “political conspiracy theories” - even after his own health officials admitted to hiding data for fear of a federal investigation.
When asked outright if he would apologize for withholding his state's nursing home death totals, Cuomo responded:
“Apologize? Look I have said repeatedly, we made a mistake in creating the void. We made a mistake in creating the void. When we didn’t provide information, it allowed press, people, cynics, politicians to fill the void. When you don’t correct disinformation, you allow it to continue. And we created the void, not because people weren’t working hard...because you know how hard people were working, and well, you should have prioritized providing more information. Yes, Yes. In retrospect we should have prioritized providing more information.”
Cuomo says his nursing home scandal is a conspiracy theory
— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) February 16, 2021
His secretary has already admitted and apologized for it pic.twitter.com/TbiMVy8PvA
“They were all working 24 hours a day," Cuomo said of his health officials. "You know, remember where this was, you're in the middle of hell during this time. But no excuses. No excuses. We should have not created the void. We should have done a better job in providing information. We should have done a better job of knocking down the disinformation. You’d never knock down all these conspiracy theories, the political conspiracy theories because they generate 10 a day. But we should have done a better job of providing as much information as we could, as quickly as we could. And we should have done a better job on that, yes. And no excuses, I, I accept responsibility for that. I am in charge, I take responsibility. We should have provided more information faster.”
The governor repeatedly said no excuses, while making excuses. He also took "responsibility” for not providing more information, when in fact he provably withheld information and misled the public, the press, and state legislators.
RELATED: 14 Democratic NY State Senators Call For Gov. Cuomo to Be Stripped of Emergency Powers
New York State Democrats took to Twitter to sound off on the governor following the press conference, including State Senator Jessica Ramos who tweeted, “No one believes you.”
Trash. No one believes you. https://t.co/XrVngU5pe6
— Jessica Ramos (@jessicaramos) February 15, 2021
State Senator Julia Salazar explained that the Governor never notified the state legislature about his withholding of data.
If the Governor had actually informed the legislature months ago that his office was withholding the data they had on total nursing home deaths, there would’ve been no need for them to have a call with a group of legislators last week to inform them of this for the first time.
— Julia Salazar (@JuliaCarmel__) February 15, 2021
Cuomo asserted in the press conference that the state legislators were “wrong” in saying they were never informed about the delay for their data request. State Senator Alessandra Biaggi refuted this claim.
No, @NYGovCuomo , you did not tell the *entire* Senate or Assembly that there was a DOJ investigation, as the reason why you didn't share the nursing home numbers.
— Alessandra Biaggi (@Biaggi4NY) February 15, 2021
I found out about a DOJ investigation with the rest of NY'ers in the @nypost story Thursday night.