Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 373 | Uncovering Andrew Cuomo's COVID Corruption | Guest: Janice Dean

Episode Date: February 22, 2021

Today we're going over the corruption of Andrew Cuomo regarding COVID deaths in nursing homes. We look at the timeline of the pandemic in New York and the accusations of dishonesty by Cuomo's administration. Despite glowing coverage from the mainstream media in the past, Cuomo's corruption is finally coming to light — even though people on the Right have known for quite some time. Speaking of media coverage, we also discuss the differing responses that New York and Florida had to the coronavirus and how their governors were treated differently by the media. Then, we talk to Janice Dean of Fox News, who was personally affected by Andrew Cuomo's decision to put COVID-positive people in nursing homes. --- Today's Sponsor: Kitty Poo Club: Give yourself the gift that keeps on giving all year: a Kitty Poo subscription. Go to KittyPooClub.com and use promo code 'ALLIE' to get 20% off your first order when you set up auto-ship. --- Show Links: Pre-order Janice Dean's new book: "Make Your Own Sunshine: Inspiring Stories of People Who Find Light in Dark Times" https://amzn.to/3qKUp1Q Florida governor accused of playing politics with Covid vaccine: https://nbcnews.to/3pHgPzt  Media Ignore DeSantis’s Minority Outreach to Smear Florida Vaccine Effort: https://bit.ly/3dyYkep  Vaccination Rollout: Red States Outpace Blue States: https://bit.ly/3pHyszq --- Previous Episodes: Ep 241 | Little Tyrants Everywher‪e‬ Ep 255 | Hypocrisy Unmasked: Killing Grandma and Blaming Christian‪s --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. I am back in the studio. It should sound better if you're watching on YouTube. It should look better. We had crazy weather last week as you guys know and as we have talked about. But now it's all good. It's all good. It's beautiful weather here now and I get to be back in the studio talking to you guys and a much better set than the one that I had last week. So I'm so excited about today. episode. I know I say that all the time, and I really am excited about every episode that I do, but today I am talking to a particularly awesome guest, and that is Janice Dean. She is the chief meteorologist for Fox News, and she typically doesn't wait into politics, but over the past year,

she has been speaking out against the corruption of Andrew Cuomo and how his corruption has negatively affected the elderly population in New York because of the COVID policies that he put in place, that put them more at risk. And she personally has suffered, unfortunately. Her family has suffered from some of his mandates. And she has been beating this drum so consistently over the past year. And I'm just so thankful and admiring of her bravery. And so we're going to have a conversation with her at the last half or the last bit

of this episode. She is an amazing story. she's so articulate and she's so passionate about this. And you're also going to leave that conversation feeling uplifted and encouraged because that's just who she is. That's what she does. Before we start that conversation, though, I'm going to kind of set us up. I want to talk about what's been happening in New York, some of these policies by Andrew Cuomo, the media coverage of it and then compare and contrast that to the media coverage of Ron DeSantis. And this is important because as thinking people, and in particular as Christians who care about the truth and who care

about things like bias, who care about, for example, the sin of partiality and who want to try to elevate the truth and seek the truth as much as we can as fallible human beings, we need to care about media bias, really whether it goes one way or another. You guys know I've said many times, I am a conservative. I'm a conservative Christian. and so I'm going to always come from that perspective. You usually know kind of what conclusions I am going to come to. And I don't hide that from you guys.

I don't pretend to be this middle of the road journalist who is never going to tell you my opinion. This is an opinion commentary show. There seems to be some confusion sometimes in the reviews that I get. It literally says in the description that I have a Christian conservative worldview, which means that I'm never going to try to hide the truth from you, or I'm never going to try to be hypocritical or have double standards or be duplicitous or deceitful or anything like that. But it does mean that I have a particular perspective that is going to color my commentary. Now, when it comes to the news, when it comes to journalism, they purport to be, they pretend to be unbiased.

They say that they're just bringing us the facts, that it has nothing to do with their political leanings, that they really are, these middle of the road people. but I think we've all kind of had a good laugh at that, especially over the past few years. I have no problem with bias. I have no problem with opinions as long as you are honest about that. As long as you say, this is the perspective that I'm coming from. And as far as I know, every fact that I am giving you is absolutely true, but my conclusions are colored by a particular perspective. I have nothing wrong with that. But it's when the media pretend to be our arbiters of truth or the fact checkers on Facebook,

these big tech companies, pretend to be our arbiters of truth. Pretend to be the prison through which all reality or all experiences, all events must go for us to be able to draw or see right conclusions. That's when I have a problem when I see such gross and disturbing bias from them in a way that completely obscures reality and the truth. And then it's up to people like me and you to dig through a middle. million different stories to try to find what is actually real. And if you want to talk about why, one of the reasons why we're so polarized, there are many reasons, but one of the reasons why we're

so polarized today is because it's just easier to read outlets and to watch people and to listen to people that affirm our biases. Because when we go to the other side, it's not like we're getting just, you know, a challenging perspective. We're getting what we feel like is, an obscuring of the truth. So when I read MSNBC or when I watch MSNBC, it's not just that my opinions are challenged. It's that I feel that they are not telling the whole story. And I'm sure people feel that about outlets on the conservative side as well. So it can just get very difficult. And people decide I'm not going to wade through the facts. I'm not going to dig through all the details. I am just going to believe every headline that comes my way that confirms my bias. And that's a problem. It takes a lot

of work for us to kind of dig through everything to figure out what's going on. I'm going to try my best to do that today with Andrew Cuomo because there has not been fair media coverage of him because he's a Democrat and people like Andrew Cuomo and he was kind of the foil to President Trump while President Trump was in office. President Trump was supposed to be like this adjuster or simultaneously a jester and, you know, the Joker, I guess, this this evil corrupt genius that was purposely trying to kill people of coronavirus while at the same time the media depicted him as this clumsy fool who could never get anything right. And then we were supposed to look at Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, and see confidence, confidence. And we were supposed to see success.

This is how you handle things. This is how you handle the virus. So he kind of just became Trump's arch nemesis. And he became the guy that the media looked to to kind of, you know, set up on this platform or idolizes the hero of COVID response. And really, nothing could be further from the truth. And that's what we're going to talk about today in pursuit of reality, in pursuit of truth, in pursuit of clarity, because that is always important. So let's do a little timeline. Let's back up a little bit. Start of COVID. It's almost been a year. We've almost had like a year anniversary to the start of COVID. I remember my last speaking engagement was March 6th before all of it happened. I went to L.A. And I remember being like mildly worried about shaking people's hands and

hugging and things like that. And the people at the event that I, that I was speaking at, thought that I was like crazy. But I just didn't know at that point. I thought this had like a 25% death rate. And I was worried that if I shook everyone's hand or hugged people that I would get sick, it was actually in L.A. Then I came home. Everything shut down. It's almost been a year since then, which is just crazy. But at the start of COVID, March 25th, 2020, the Cuomo administration in New York, quote, barred nursing homes from refusing people just because they have COVID-19. So at the rollout of his response to COVID, we knew, by the way, that the most vulnerable

community, the most vulnerable people to coronavirus and the most likely to end up in the hospital and the most likely die, we knew that that was the elderly population. The Cuomo administration, I don't know the reasoning. I don't understand the logic behind it, but they decided that they were going to allow COVID-positive nursing home patients back into nursing homes. Then in July 2020, Cuomo's office conducted an internal report that found that this March 25th order set thousands of recovering coronavirus patients into nursing homes. And that was not a significant factor in the outbreak. Of course, this report that came out that Cuomo's office issued obviously got a lot of scrutiny and a lot of criticism because of flawed methodology. And there were selective stats that sidestepped the actual impact of the March 25 order, which actually uttered or ushered, we thought, in July 2020, more than 6,300 recovering virus patients into nursing homes at the height of the pandemic while they were still contagious.

So Cuomo's office comes out in July 2020, says, oh, yeah, we. did this, but it's, you know, it's not a big deal. It didn't really have an effect on anything. August 2020, Cuomo announced that he would be releasing a book in which he reflected on his experience with the pandemic so far and offered leadership advice and a glimpse into his relationship within President Donald Trump. So he is just making the most of the popularity that he had gained in this, in this pandemic and because of his response. Then in November 2020, there was an announcement that Cuomo would receive an international Emmy for his once daily televised COVID-19 briefings, which informed and calmed the public, we were told. And then in January of 2021, Attorney General of New York, Letitia James, released a report describing how the governor's office actually undercounted the number of COVID-linked nursing home deaths by more than 50%. And, you know, we knew this. Janice Dean had been talking about this for a long time. We knew about the March order.

even though Cuomo's office said in July, hey, this March order had nothing to do with anything. He became really defensive about it. He said, no, we're doing really well with nursing home deaths. We knew on the conservative side this was a lie. We had been talking about this. We had been tweeting about this. We talked about this on this podcast, I think last April, how Cuomo had failed in his leadership and COVID response. And the media was just completely gaslighting all of us. I mean, they were just completely brushing over any of his failures in order to present him as the competent leader in contrast with their arch enemy President Trump. The New York Post reported that, quote, Cuomo's top aide, Melissa DeRoso, admitted during a conference call with Democratic leaders that the administration hid unfavorable information about the state's nursing home COVID-19 deaths out of concern that it was going to be used against them. According to a Thursday report from the Associated Press, more than 9,000 recovering COVID patients in the Empire State were released from hospitals into nursing homes early in the pandemic under a controversial directive from Cuomo's administration.

Now, we talked about, I think, back in April, the possibility of why they decided to release these elderly patients early while they were still positive, while they were still contagious, back into nursing homes, thereby spreading this disease that is deadly. for this population like wildfire, and it probably has to do with Medicare reimbursements for hospitals, hospitals making sure that they are getting the reimbursements and the money they need. And the crazy thing is, is the policies that led up to this, the Medicare, Medicaid cuts that Cuomo was responsible for. I think in November of 2019 also had something to do with this particular order in making sure that hospitals could get the reimbursements that they want. I'll make sure to link to that past episode because we have detailed just all of the incompetence and the failures of Andrew Cuomo that led up to his continued failures after the pandemic started.

The new number of 9,056 recovering patients sent to hundreds of nursing homes is more than 40% higher than what the State Health Department previously released, and it raises new questions as to whether a March 25th directive from Governor Andrew Cuomo's administration helped spread sickness and death among residents a charge the state disputed. Now, Trump had started tweeting about the mishandling by governors like Newsom like Whitmer, like Phil Murphy, including Andrew Cuomo. And apparently, Cuomo's office got very nervous about this. And that is why Melissa DeRoso, who works for Cuomo, said to the New York lawmakers on that, conference call that, hey, we're worried about this. And look, this is why we misreported this stuff or this is why we're not saying the truth about how many nursing home deaths there

were because we're worried about being scrutinized. She said, we weren't sure if there was going to be an investigation. And so Cuomo and his staff allegedly lied. The Washington Times asks a really good question. Why didn't Cuomo send these patients to the U.S. NS comfort or the Javits Center, which were set up by President Trump specifically to help New York because it was thought that New York was going to have an overload of cases. And so you'll remember that giant ship that was off the coast of New York that President Trump made sure was there to help with the overflow. And also Andrew Cuomo, as we talked about in a previous episode, had shut down a few hospitals in predominantly minority and predominantly poor areas in New York before any of this happened.

which was part of why President Trump needed to send the ship. And so why didn't Andrew Cuomo, who said that they didn't even need the ship, sent those COVID-positive patients to that ship, rather than back into the nursing homes because he didn't want to give Trump credit. And the media didn't care either because they didn't want to give Trump credit. So for everyone on the left, that calls anyone on the right a grandma killer because, hey, we care about businesses and we care about restaurants and we want people to be able to safely live their lives so they don't die by suicide and loneliness and poverty. Everyone on the left who has been pointing to the right is heartless. What did you have to say about any of this? Most people, nothing. Most of the people

who call everyone on the right grandma killers had nothing to say about any of this when it was going on, just pointed fingers at President Trump as if all of this was within his jurisdiction rather than these state leaders. As you guys probably know, the New York State lockdown strategy was to basically close everything down. Andrew Cuomo was sued by a couple synagogues and I think Catholic diocese in New York. We've talked about this on a previous episode two. They won their case because he was discriminatory. The Supreme Court found in shutting down and restricting these religious institutions

in various parts of the state in a way that he did not restrict other businesses. and so he has been very restrictive in closing down businesses and closing down the economy and making sure that schools stay shut down. Of course, there's been a struggle between state leaders and teachers unions who want to keep the schools shut down. But he has been as restrictive as possible. And yet there have been 46,346 deaths as of right now, according to the New York Times. And now let's compare that to a state like Florida who is led by a Republican that the media just happens to absolutely hate. Florida has had 29,905 deaths, and Florida has 2 million more people than New York does and a bigger elderly population.

And yet the restaurants have been mostly open. The schools have been mostly open. The businesses have been mostly open. People in Florida have pretty much been able to lead regular lives. California also has a lower per capita death rate than New York. And we can go through the highest death rates in the country. Number one, New York, number one, New Jersey, number two, New York, number three, Massachusetts, number four, Rhode Island, way down the list, Texas, and then way down the list more. Number 28 is Florida.

And yet, if you read the news, you would think that Florida is leading the country, nay, leading the world in deaths and hospitalizations, and that's just not true. New York has the second highest number of hospitalizations, according to the Atlantic, just looking at the raw number after California, which again, California has millions of more people than New York. And so it makes sense that their hospitalization number would be higher, but New York still has the second highest number of hospitalizations more than Florida, which again has more people than New York. And yet, the press coverage for Andrew Cuomo, after all of this corruption, after the quantified incompetence that we have seen from his leadership,

we have gotten headlines like this over the past year. This is from our good friend, Jennifer Rubin, at the Washington Post. No one does it like Andrew Cuomo, quote, remarkable success in lowering the race of infection, hospitalization, and deaths in New York. M.C., Democratic Governor Andrew M. Cuomo's daily news conferences, which are really tutorials on managing the crisis sprinkled with philosophical observations and tales from the Cuomo family. How cute.

U.S. News, how coronavirus made Andrew Cuomo. America's governor. New York's brash leader has risen to the occasion as the nation looks for a comforting leader during the public health crisis brought on by coronavirus. And then in May, CNN says Andrew Cuomo may be the single most popular politician in America right now. And sadly, that was probably true. A lot of people are duped by what they see in the media. Rolling Stone said in April, Andrew Cuomo takes charge. The governor of New York found himself at the center of a deadly crisis. His response has helped guide the nation. The Philadelphia Inquirer, Andrew Cuomo for president, Joe Biden should make it happen. What? Newsday, DNC should go with Cuomo for president. He is the only elected official in the United States today. He was fully demonstrated the leadership, toughness, management, skill, and humanity that meeting the coronavirus pandemic demands. Think about all of the statistics, all of the facts that I just shared with you about his leadership and his decisions and what has happened in New York. And remember these headlines also when you listen to my conversation with Janice Dean and some of just the disturbing details that have been revealed about Cuomo as a person and his leadership. Now, let's compare that glowing coverage that we have seen of Cuomo despite all of the craziness that has come out from his office. Compare that coverage to the coverage of Ron DeSantis, who is the Republican governor of Florida. Washington Post in December, even by Florida standards.

Governor Ron DeSantis is a COVID-19 catastrophe. CNN, putting politics in front of lives. DeSantis faces criticism over Florida's COVID-19 response. Miami Herald. To what deaths has Governor DeSantis sunk to please President Trump's secrecy, deception, and even arrayed. Tampa Bay Times. DeSantis has betrayed the people he serves.

And now listen to this recent article in MSNBC that describes Ron DeSantis. his vaccine rollout, distribution, and also just his leadership during the time of COVID in general. Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican, ignored federal guidelines and prioritized getting senior citizens, one of Florida's most potent voting blocks, vaccinated first. Okay, let me read that again. Governor Ron DeSantis, or Republican, ignored federal guidelines and prioritized getting senior citizens, the goal. One of Florida's most potent voting bloat.

blocks vaccinated first. It also happens to be the population most likely to die from coronavirus. How dare Ron DeSantis. When Holocaust survivors and Cuban survivors of the Bay of Pigs debacle, revered members of two other key Florida voting blocks, got their first shots. DeSantis made sure he was there for the news conferences, says MSNBC. And now the governor stands accused of using the COVID-19 vaccine to reward powerful political supporters and developers by setting up pop-up vaccination sites and plant communities they developed and where GOP voters predominate. So the media narrative has been that Ron DeSantis is sliding specifically minority communities, poor communities in favor of affluent white communities in getting the vaccines so he can reward them for their support and ensure their votes next go

round. Now, there is absolutely no evidence of that whatsoever. And by the way, let us remember that the numbers do not show in any way that Ron DeSantis has had any kind of worse response to this than someone like Andrew Cuomo. There's no numerical evidence of that whatsoever. And yet, the media wants to jump up this outrage. They're worried about Ron DeSantis running in 2024. They're worried about how popular he is among Republicans. They're worried about showing GOP leadership. is something that can be competent, something that can be good, something that can be compassionate. And so they are trying their darnest to bring him down.

National Review wrote about this, and I thought that they did a really, they did a really good uncovering of what's actually happening in Florida. So let me read you an excerpt from this article. The efforts to vaccinate people in underserved Florida communities were largely ignored by most mainstream media outlets this past week. During the three-day pop-up event, so that was an event that Governor DeSantis organized, he has been organizing these vaccination events around the state. 3,000 doses of vaccine were administered in a planned community with a large number of seniors called Lakewood Ranch in Manatee County just south of St. Petersburg. Democrats charged that DeSantis was playing politics with vaccine distribution and favoring white, wealthy Republican.

State Representative Michelle Rayner accused the governor of prioritizing of, fluent neighborhoods over our underserved population. But that's not actually true. This article goes on to say in early February, DeSantis teamed with former NFL star and Kwan Bolden to distribute vaccines in Bolden's hometown of Pahokie, an impoverished farming community. More than 60% of Pahokie's population is black, according to the U.S. Census reports, because the city is about 30 miles from the nearest public's grocery

store in one of the state's primary vaccination distributors. Most of the area seniors has had little access to the vaccine, according to a report by the Palm Beach Post. And so DeSantis made sure that this predominantly minority community, who doesn't typically have access to vaccine distribution, that they were able to get the vaccine when and how they needed to get it. According to the post, DeSantis was contacted about Pahoki by the state's lottery secretary, John Davis. Another former. Bokeh football standout who had been talking with Bolden. Among the 51 churches and recreation centers where the state has had vaccination events are Holy Temple Missionary Baptist Church,

a poor majority black in a poor majority black city in Miami-Dade County, a recreation center in downtown Fort Myers, and at least two churches in the overwhelmingly Hispanic city of Hialeah in Miami-Dade. Last week, the Division of Emergency Management established a state, supported vaccination site at the historically black Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, the state capital. DeSantis's administration has also launched a program to deliver vaccines to homebound seniors starting with Holocaust survivors in World War II and Korean War veterans. But apparently that's bad. People are very angry at DeSantis for going to these events, for taking press photos, for thinking these veterans, even though this is far in a way, a better.

plan and a more efficient and effective rollout and a more effective and efficient way to reach these predominantly minority communities than what we're seeing in blue states. And the spectator, actually, there's an article in the spectator that is detailing this and is making that very argument that red states are doing better with vaccine rollout the democratic states are. This is what the spectator says. West Virginia has one of the lowest per capita incomes in the United States, along with some of the highest levels of chronic illnesses. But it has been among the most prolific and protecting its residents against the novel coronavirus.

The governor has closely managed the process of determining who gets priority while giving counties far less leeway than in other states to make their own rules. That ethos has helped propel his state into a position that much wealthier and healthier states can only envy. West Virginia, the article says, is no outlier. As of this writing, the CDC reports that under the leadership of Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, Florida has delivered more full vaccines than have perennial blue states like New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Washington, Oregon, and of course, California. Only three blue states have managed to outpace Florida on vaccine distribution per 100,000 residents, New Mexico, Connecticut, and Vermont.

Despite the obvious success of Florida's program, Democrats and the media have relentlessly criticized Governor DeSantis for his handling of the vaccinations. The Sunshine State is home to a large percentage of people over 65, yet his critics insist that his policy of prioritizing seniors is politically motivated. The real problem, of course, is that his state is outperforming blue states, and that is correct. And they also point out how Alaska really has done the best when it comes to vaccine distribution, even though there are a lot of topographical challenges when it comes to Alaska. So it says this. Bigger than Texas, California and Montana combined Alaska is a vast, sparsely populated, and largely roadless state with only a handful of main arteries. To distribute vaccines, doctors and nurses statewide have had to rely on a wide range

of transportation modes. Alaska's vaccine process is distinct from other states in that it is built on an existing immunization program. So that means that they were prepared. They already had a program in place and all they had to do is build on it. And yet we are not getting, we are not seeing praise for these red states. Instead, we are being told that DeSantis should be called Death Santis. And we have been told for the past year that we need to be hailing Andrew Cuomo as a hero.

Only recently has the media decided, you know what? Okay, Trump lost. And so it's okay for us to kind of criticize him for these things. AOC finally came out and said, yeah, you know, I support an investigation. okay, well, AOC apparently has been too busy going down to Texas and raising money for Texas to care about her own constituents for the past year who have no doubt been negatively affected by Cuomo's lack of leadership and the corruption that has been obvious to most people for months now. She didn't say anything about that. She could have been calling for an investigation or resignation a long time ago. but now when it's okay to do so, like when Democrats have the White House, when they have Congress,

that's when the Democratic media, that's when Democratic politicians now feel safe to be able to come out and to criticize people like Andrew Cuomo. And look, I'm glad that people are criticizing him. I'm glad that there are some in the media that are writing about his corruption. I'm glad that there are Democratic politicians calling him out. I did hear a theory the other day that I thought was an interesting theory that the Democratic establishment, and this is just a theory, and I don't have any, I don't say this on any authority whatsoever. I just thought it was interesting, something that I heard on another podcast, that apparently the Democratic establishment really wants Kamala for president in 2024. And they want to ensure that she will win that election and that she will not

lose a primary, considering she failed so miserably in the Democratic primary last time, never polled above 1%. Like even in her own state, she was struggling. So they know that she doesn't have widespread popularity, but they really want her to become president because they believe that she is going to be able to, or she will be willing to push through whatever policy, whatever agenda the Democratic establishment has. And so apparently they want, they want Kamala Harris to win in 2024. They don't want any strong contenders. And so they are trying to elbow out people. like Cuomo. They're trying to elbow out. Gavin Newsom, anyone who might have their sights set on the White House in 2024, I am hearing that the Democratic establishment may be trying to push those contenders

out. So it will be easy for Kamala Harris to win in 2024. Who knows if that's true? I thought that was interesting. So that could be why all of the sudden, after the past year of conservative saying, hey, Cuomo is doing a bad job. Many of these Democratic governors that are, getting credit or getting credit for no reason. They're doing a bad job. A lot of these Republican governors that are doing really well or getting criticism for no reason. They're doing a good job. We've been saying that for a year. And now you are kind of seeing a little acquiescence, a little agreement from the Democratic media and from Democratic politicians, but only because they believe that their power, at least for now, is safe. And so they can do these things. And maybe it has

something to do with 2024 as well. I'm not sure. So I just kind of wanted to give us plenty of context in leading up to my conversation with Janice Dean to let us know what we're dealing with here. The hefty hypocrisy that we're seeing, the deceitfulness and the duplicity coming from our media in regards to this coverage, it just reminds us that we really have to dig if we really want to know what's going on and to never get whipped up just by media headlines that we also and always have to do more work to actually understand what is really going on and what the truth of the matter is. Janice, thank you so much for joining me. I've been so excited to talk to you. Can you tell us,

for those who don't know, what has kind of inspired you or motivated you to call out Andrew Cuomo in the way that you have for the past few months? It's been 10 months, almost a year. It's hard to believe it. And I think you know, as well as most of the viewers on Fox and Friends, I'm the meteorologist on Fox News. And I've been that person for 17 years. And I've never been a political person. People don't know who I voted for.

I always say the only red and blue I see on a map for areas of low pressure and high pressure. So to find myself in this political storm is not comfortable. for me, but the reason I am speaking out is because my husband's parents died of COVID in elder care facilities. They were in separate elder care facilities. And going back in late March, we lost his dad first. He was in a nursing home, a rehab center, because we were trying to get him in better shape to join his mom, D, who was in an assisted living residence close to us here on Long Island. And this is a fairly recent move. You know, they lived. in a four-story walkup in Brooklyn for over 50 years. It was rent-controlled. It was hard to get

them to move over the last several years and their health was failing them. We had AIDS that were going up to see them and take care of them, but it was just turning out that we needed 24-hour care, especially with his dad who had dementia. Right. And so his mom went on a tour with my husband to find a nice place close to us where they would be taken care of. They would be in a double room. And, you know, really just a few months after we got that done, COVID happened. And we were in quarantine. We were only able to really contact them through the phone or talking to somebody that worked at their separate elder care facility.

And we didn't even know his dad was ill until late on a Saturday morning we get a phone call saying that his dad wasn't feeling well. And then three hours later we get a phone call. saying he was dead. Wow. And we had no idea he was even sick. Obviously, we knew that COVID was an issue in New York because we were all in quarantine. I was at home.

My kids were at home. We didn't know his dad had died from COVID until we saw his death certificate. And looking back, there was a red flag, but we didn't know it at the time. We got a phone call probably a week or so before. or his dad passed away, saying that they were going to move him to a different floor so that they could allow for more residents to come in. And when I look back now, I think that that was our first sign that there were COVID positive patients being put into his nursing home. We don't know that for certain. I can only assume and hindsight. Then his mom got sick two weeks later,

and my husband had to tell his mom that her husband had died. And obviously, the worst thing he's ever had to do, she was heartbroken. She got sick. She was brought to the hospital, and they diagnosed her with COVID two weeks later, and she died in the hospital. And my husband wasn't able to see her. He got a call after she passed away, saying that he could come see her body through a glass window. Wow.

Wow. So what have you learned since then? Obviously, I can't even imagine dealing with all of that and not being able to mourn and to grieve and to honor their lives in the way that you typically would be able to in any kind of normal year. But add on top of that kind of what you've learned about the Cuomo administration and some of the very purposeful steps, it seems like they took to kind of make this vulnerable. population in nursing homes even more vulnerable? What has it been like dealing with that? What have you, what have you learned? What has that process been like for you? We didn't know there was a mandate, an order to put COVID positive patients in a nursing homes until after they died. And I started seeing those reports and not seeing a lot of them. And then finding out that my mother-in-law's number, because she died in the hospital, was not

counted towards the nursing home deaths. So I started to see these bits and pieces on some of the news. The New York Post was doing great reporting. But certainly the mainstream media outside of Fox News was not reporting on this at all. So in mid-May, I talked to my husband about coming forward and talking about our story. And he was, you know, he didn't want me to go public with it. It was too personal. My husband is not an on-house.

air television personality. He's very private. But because we weren't, we weren't seeing the news reports. And when the governor was on television with his brother on CNN, it was like a joke. Right. There were no, there were no, there were no, there were no questions about the nursing home mandate that he had in place for 46 days for March 25th to May 10th. Why was he putting COVID positive patients in a nursing home? He knew that was going to be an issue. He was even, voted as saying it was like fire through dry grass. So what were the origins of this March 25th order? So when I saw him on CNN with the big cotton swabs and his brother, I decided it was it was time to say something. It was time to talk about my family, what happened and how thousands of families were

going through the same thing. And we couldn't have wakes or funerals. We couldn't see our loved ones to hold them, to hold their hand. We weren't there. So that's when I decided it was it was important for me to tell my story and spread the word about what was happening inside nursing home. And I'm sure at first it may have felt like people weren't listening or it wasn't catching on because we saw that he came out with his book in the fall and he was going to talk about, you know, what a wonderful job he did and the importance of his effective leadership. And then he was nominated for an Emmy for his daily updates. And so I'm sure there have been times over the past 10 months where you felt like, okay, is it even worth speaking out? Is anyone listening to me? Is that kind of how it felt at least at some points when it seemed like it was just not getting through to people?

Absolutely. Every channel other than Fox, I would see him on CBS this morning. The NBC shows, MSNBC, the CNN program with his brother. I started getting really angry because they would have him on for lengthy interviews and never ask him about the nursing home mandate. And then as you mentioned, there was this celebration of his leadership while thousands of people were dying in New York. His leadership book, of course, was a New York Times bestseller.

He had this really bizarre poster that he came out before that, that he was selling with all of the things he loved about himself. you know, his staff, a daughter's boyfriend hanging off the cliff. This was like this was a COVID mountain essentially showing the cases in New York how they peaked like a mountain and then how he was making sure that he was helping crush the curve or bring down those total numbers and selling this COVID mountain poster. He also had a paper mache poster he was using in his presentations to show how he had successfully brought that curve down. New York tough, you like to say. And then the Emmy Award, it was just,

it was like we were living in this alternate universe that we were going through this grieving process. Thousands of other families were as well. And no one was speaking up. And then there was some hearings here in New York and August to talk about the nursing home issue in Albany. And I originally was asked to speak. Republican assemblyman Kevin Byrne asked if I would like to tell my family's story because they were talking about the nursing home

mandate and what was going on and they had Howard Zucker, his health commissioner, talking to lawmakers. And so I was going to tell my family story and then all of a sudden on a Friday night my invitation must have got lost in the mail.

They decided they were uncomfortable with me speaking about my family. And what have you thought about Cuomo's reaction? As some of these accusations have been leveled to him in front of him, the press has started to ask him some of these, I'm sure, uncomfortable questions. It seems like he's kind of gotten just a little defensive and shut them down.

Well, that's only happened recently, and that began with the AG's report. There have been many investigations into this governor, and the fact that he has been giving sort of false numbers in terms of how many elderly died because New York was the only state that wasn't counting those that died in the hospital. So I always sounded the alarm on that, that the statistics he was giving on television when he was being asked about the nursing home issue was, oh, well, we're far behind other states that lost seniors in nursing homes.

We did a great job because he wasn't counting those in the hospital. So there were reporters that had investigations through the FOIL Act. There was also a Justice Department investigation through Bill Barr that they wanted to find out about the nursing home issue. And that's when things started to sort of, you know, ramp up a little bit because we now know from Melissa DeRosa, one of his top aides, she was apologizing to Democratic lawmakers a couple of weeks ago and basically was on record admitting that they were. were covering up the numbers because they were afraid of the DOJ investigation. And then more recently, our attorney general in New York, who is a Democrat, Letitia James, conducted her own investigation into the nursing home issue. And I think that's when the dam began to break that a fellow Democrat, our attorney general

here in New York, was doing her own investigation and indeed saying that the numbers were undercounted by the thousands. Wow. And what do you think is going to happen and how quickly? I know that you can't know that for sure. In politics, of course, is messy. But do you kind of envision the dam continuing to break? Do you envision the walls continuing to close in on him and him actually being held accountable for these things? I hope so. When he has conducted some of his press conference more recently, he is on the defensive. And you can tell it looks like he's unwrable. You know, his lies are catching up to him. And people are starting to ask the question. And more and more lawmakers, like Ron Kim, who is a Democratic assemblyman, who basically said, yes, I was in on that meeting.

She did confess to covering up the numbers. And I have been bullied and threatened by this governor. So that has started that trickle-down effect that people are feeling a little bit more brave to, to admit that this governor has been bullied. and harassing and threatening, not just for months, but for years. Right. I mean, you know, if Bill de Blasio seems to have the upper hand against someone in conversations about good leadership, then things must be really bad.

Well, I hope that he's held accountable. Your hope would be that he resigns, correct? Well, no, I want a full investigation into him because I think a lot of these charges could be criminal. Truly, he needs to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So a resignation, okay. No, I want an investigation. Yeah.

Well, I'm so appreciative of you and your husband. I know that it could have been a lot easier for you to just say, you know what, this is personal. I don't really want to deal with this publicly. But I know that there are so many families who have gone through the same thing that you have, don't have the same platform that you do and are very thankful. for the way that you have pushed this and beat this drum. I, for one, really admire you for your boldness. You've been told to watch your back, correct, in talking about this?

Yeah, early on, I emailed with a person that knows the Cuomo family very well that told me that my cause is a good one and that this person was very sorry for my family's loss. but when it comes to Cuomo that I should watch my back. And I've also been, you know, not necessarily threatened, but popped down to by some of his aides saying, well, she's just the weather girl. Yeah, you know, she's not a credible source on anything except maybe the forecast. So they try to shame you that way and silence you,

but that only makes me want to speak louder. Well, good for you. And in the midst of all of this, you have a new book, correct? Can you tell us about it? Oh my goodness. Yes, the book. I will tell you, it's called Make Your Own Sunshine. It comes out next week. And I am so proud of this book. It's not about Cuomo. It is about people being light in a time of darkness. And writing this book during the pandemic when we lost my husband's parents, it really did give me something to look forward to and some people to connect with. during this really challenging moment. And so when I started writing the book, I didn't realize I would be writing most of it during a pandemic.

Right. But I feel like it came into my life for a reason. And all of the chapters are about just ordinary, everyday people doing wonderful things for other people without really even wanting to have that appreciation back to them. Just, you know, doing kind deeds. some of them just as simple as paying for someone's coffee in the lineup to wonderful moments that are actually like a ripple effect.

It inspires others to do sort of the same thing or pass it along to someone else. And that's what I call making your own sunshine because sometimes in those very dark moments, it's the people that come into your life and spread kindness that really shines a light. And, you know, you don't necessarily need that sunshine. to have that bright light in your life. It can just be someone trying to do something good. Yes. Well, that sounds like the book that people need right now.

I know a lot of people are feeling burnt out with politics and the news, and they just want some positivity and a reminder that we have more in common than we don't. And so it sounds like this is the kind of book that people would love and need to read right now. So I'm guessing you can get it anywhere books are sold starting next week, correct? Yes, absolutely. You can pre-order it. And, you know, certainly I would love to come on and talk about it again and highlight some of these beautiful people that I was able to talk about in the book. And they certainly helped me get through a very dark time in my life. So I'm so appreciative. Well, wonderful. Thank you so much. You are someone who spreads sunshine,

even when you were talking about all the craziness that's gone on in the last year, even as you have been grieving, you have shared a lot of sunshine for a lot of people, not just this past year, but over the many years that you have had this platform. So I'm very thankful. I know that I will be praying for you in the midst of all of this, and I know my audience will be too. So thank you so much for taking the time to come on. Well, thank you and thank you to your audience.

And I have felt your love and prayers throughout this whole ordeal. And so I thank you personally for spreading my message as well and giving you. me all that love and support. I feel it. Of course. Well, thank you so much.