CNN anchor Jake Tapper on Tuesday said he found it “perplexing” to see New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) “crowing” about the state’s success in managing the coronavirus given how many people have died in the state due to COVID-19.
Next thing Cuomo will be on vacation with Tucker Carlson.
Tapper wrote in a tweet Tuesday adding that, no other state had lost as many lives — “not even close.”
Florida: “Hold my beer.”
Jake: there are better targets out there for your indignation.
I know leadership in NY made mistakes in the beginning weeks, but they are also the most densely populated area of the country and they were first to get hit with a massive spike. They were told by the Trump administration that the virus was coming from China when it came to NY from Europe. There was also no federal response at the airports to stop the spread and quarantine people coming in from other countries. NY was learning a lot of lessons on the fly, not to mention the PPE shortage and the total absence of any federal assistance.
States like FL and TX have been handed a model as to what to do. They’ve been given the blueprint and their governors are simply ignoring it. FL and TX are likely to dwarf NY’s numbers in the coming months and that is solely on them. This seems like a sad attempt by Tapper to pull a “both sides”.
Jake
Zero deaths two days ago. What do you want? Unlike most governor’s and trump, Cuomo acted and brought NYC into line with the EU. Really. People are coming into NYC to avoid their home states. You can debate and whine all you want, but I live in NYC and feel pretty safe. Jake, go to Miamior Houston or Phoenix and then whine.
Alan
Not to pile on Tapper or CNN but they definitely do the both sides do it dance. I guess it works for them.
The temptation to compare DeSantis to Cuomo to Whitmer (or Tinker to Evers to Chance) obscures the fact that we simply should not be in a situation where state governors are held responsible – there are so many reasons that pandemic response needs to be on a national level.
Crowing is what the White House does every day, when in reality every member of this maladministration should be being removed in handcuffs for gross criminal negligence.
It’s fair to question some of the early moves Cuomo made, and a lot of politicians…mistakes were made that cost lives. The lack of knowledge about what the US was up against made that inevitable, and New York (the entire metropolitan area really) was a special case since it is so densely packed. They really should have been more on the ball to being with, even with the lack of federal guidance they could have moved more quickly to shut down.
After that, however, Cuomo and the states around him all did a pretty good job overall to control the virus and stop its spread. It’s pretty clear that once they got into it, they took it seriously, made science and saving lives the only guiding lights, and pushed out other noise (i.e. Trump) as much as they could. Tapper is missing the point…it’s not that a lot of people died, no one is forgetting or minimizing that, it’s that they were able to take a completely horrible situation and turn it around into a success story, on par with the rest of the world.
Really, the ire of the media should be pointed at the red states which ignored the run up of the virus, despite seeing what happened in NYC and overseas, and who are still not taking steps to shut down and keep people safe. There’s no excuse for what is going on there, at all, and it’s going to make New York look like a huge win in comparison once they are done with this outbreak (if they are ever done).
Screw Tapper with his bothsiderism bullshit. NYC was hit first and hardest because of its uniqueness as an international hub and highly dense and large population. Without any heads up from the federal government he rallied the city from its worst to zero COVID deaths yesterday. He’s not crowing, he’s trying to show pride in his city as a means to encourage them along, because he knows this is not over. But there’s Tapper: oh but you had more deaths than other cities! Idiot, other cities are rising during summer months when the rates should be going down.
Either this story is missing important context to bolster Tapper’s claim that Cuomo was “crowing,” or Tapper’s complaint is ludicrous, rendering this story pretty worthless.
“We tamed the beast here in New York,” Cuomo said adding that he was “so proud to be a New Yorker.”
Cuomo said the state’s COVID-19 test positivity rate which went from being “one of the worst infection rates in the country” now is “the best,” as it hovers between between 1 and 2 percent.
ETA: I generally think TPM’s reporting is pretty solid and I don’t expect every story to be a gem. My beef in this case is that the headline and content implicitly underwrite the claim that Cuomo is preening. Cuomo is a big boy, so he can take the potshots, but we’re here to attain some knowledge about events and policymakers/legislators/etc, This doesn’t help.us make informed choices.
NY’s progress while other states are seeing spikes is something to be proud of and does not strike me as “crowing.” Furthermore, Cuomo apparently didn’t claim any credit.
Slow news day for CNN and/or TPM, I guess.
Why do you say that?
The states hit early – including NY, NJ and Michigan – were flying blind because Trump spent two months pretending the virus didn’t exist. Community spread was out of control before there were confirmed cases.
Given the federal failure in testing and tracking and providing PPE for health-care providers, those states did a decent job of containing a disaster.
I came home to NY from Florida in April. It was in a tough spot. Cuomo and his team did a fine job, after some missteps, getting in under control. That’s why I’m sitting at the town pool with my granddaughter right now.
The death toll in the NE corridor had to do with Trump keeping everyone in the dark until it was too late, and states being left to figure out the right response with the clock ticking. No response was perfect but they all did get stuff under control.
I would go further to say that the high death tolls in the NE corridor are driven by nursing home deaths which are a direct federal responsibility. The states stepped in but didn’t have the direct regulatory authority or the means to totally fix a dire situation. The VA didn’t help. The Feds didn’t bring the PPE. They didn’t provide testing. There was no army of federal military personnel to assist on medical needs. No old folks were evacuated to Walter Reed. There was no help at all in any meaningful sense of the term.
Seema Varma and CMS have that role. She was constantly AWOL sucking up to Trump. I think she needs to be on trial. Her response was Flint x 100 bad. She turned the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services into the ‘center to let old people die while we let Trump spin Covid as a blue state/POC problem that will just go away’.
Give’em a couple more weeks at the current rates of new cases.
Americans (and New Yorkers) can tell the difference between a Governor facing an unprecedented pandemic with little federal support and tons of uncertainty (NY) and a Governor who learned little from that experience and opened up his state (and Disneyworld) cause freedom (FL).
It appears Jake Tapper is stupider than the average American.
Seems Tapper has a both-sides itch he’s desperate to scratch.
CNN anchor Jake Tapper on Tuesday said he found it “perplexing” to see New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) “crowing” about the state’s success in managing the coronavirus…
That Jake Tapper… what a rascal!
Now you’re simply ravin’.