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It’s finally happened.
Four months after New York state became the epicenter of the coronavirus in the United States, someone at CNN has finally gotten around to criticizing Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) for his appalling mismanagement of the outbreak in his state.
Jake Tapper, who anchors the network’s “The Lead” program, took to the Twitter machine this morning to unload a heap of criticism on Cuomo after reading about his late night “interview” with Jimmy Fallon on Monday in which the governor, in Tapper’s words, was “crowing” about how New York was a success story when it came to overcoming the virus:
NY state has lost more than 32,000 lives to COVID-19. So while it's great that the numbers have gone down, it's perplexing to see crowing, Cuomo going on Fallon, etc. No other state has lost as many lives, not even close. New Jersey is next with 17,000+https://t.co/aIphqXdWYz
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) July 14, 2020
Tapper then posted a few more tweets with links to stories that documented Cuomo’s disastrous leadership failures in the early days of the outbreak, which led to the virus’s spread not just in his state but all over the country:
2/ Yes, this has been a major challenge for every leader, but New York's leaders do not have a success story to tell. It's been about missteps and late actions.
From April: "How Delays and Unheeded Warnings Hindered New York's Virus Fight"https://t.co/rTUcF2fbWF
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) July 14, 2020
3/ From April: "Seattle’s Leaders Let Scientists Take the Lead. New York’s Did Not"https://t.co/KO7vbl8ekZ
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) July 14, 2020
4/ There have been institutional failures of government from the White House on down. Empirically New York is one of the biggest failures in the U.S. From May:https://t.co/osWSVqrxiX
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) July 14, 2020
5/ Then there's the whole nursing home disaster.https://t.co/okAd9xnAd0
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) July 14, 2020
He went on in a few more tweets and cited a few more examples. Read the full thread here.
I noticed some conservatives were praising Tapper at the conclusion of his thread for recapping Cuomo’s failures, but considering how long it’s taken even one person on CNN to get the point where they are finally going on record with more than a passing reference to these criticisms, I wasn’t impressed.
What I found especially unimpressive and off-putting were two things:
1) If you go through his thread, there are a lot of links to news sites other than CNN. The only CNN link Tapper included in his thread was the one about the nursing home scandal, which they finally gave obligatory coverage to over a month after the scandal erupted. Had CNN’s coverage of what happened in New York actually been thorough and comprehensive from day one, Tapper would have had more stories to share from his own network. That he didn’t was rather revealing.
2) There was no mention anywhere in the thread of why Gov. Cuomo feels like he can continue get away with the “crowing” and bragging about his allegedly magnificent leadership during the crisis. Pro tip: He does it because national news networks like CNN, MSNBC, CBS News, and the entertainment talk shows he’s appeared on fawn and gush over him every chance they get, treating him more like a rock star than an elected official who should face more than just questions about his dating life and the size of his nose.
And speaking of that, there was no addressing the disaster that has been Chris Cuomo’s pathetically one-sided “coverage” of his brother’s handling of the crisis, including this “interview” that came off as more of a “Keeping up with the Cuomos” episode than a serious interview:
Instead of asking his brother, @NYGovCuomo why he decided to pack COVID patients into nursing homes, killing untold amounts of people, @ChrisCuomo pulled out oversized, prop cotton swabs to mock how big his brother's nose was. This is the state of "journalism" on @CNN. Pathetic! pic.twitter.com/undeQMyVeN
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) May 21, 2020
I should note that to date, Chris Cuomo has not asked his brother one tough question about the nursing home scandal. Not one. Instead, we get this garbage from the “Prime Time” anchor about how his “Luv Guv” brother was “dishing the real 24/7” how the state was “better for it.”
I also watched the segment Tapper did later in the day on his program with CNN medical expert Dr. Sanjay Gupta. While they started out at first criticizing Cuomo’s bragging about how he had allegedly successfully steered his ship through the storm, it only took a couple of minutes before they launched into attacks on Trump administration officials, because CNN just simply can’t have not even one segment fully devoted to analyzing Cuomo’s failures in-depth. They’ve gotta get some “Orange Man Bad” stuff in there because narratives and all that:
NY Gov Cuomo seems to go on victory lap despite highest death toll in U.S. @drsanjaygupta reports pic.twitter.com/SQodVimCWk
— The Lead CNN (@TheLeadCNN) July 14, 2020
Maybe if I hadn’t paid attention for the last few months at how CNN failed to hold Gov. Cuomo accountable time and time again for his failures, I’d applaud Tapper, too. But I did pay attention to their coverage and how they tried to pin Cuomo’s failures on everyone but him. So, no, I’m not impressed. And no one else should be, either.
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