White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki speaks at the White House on Jan. 20, 2021.
On Sunday (Feb. 21), White House press secretary Jen Psaki side-stepped a question about Biden‘s attitude toward New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is currently facing allegations of a scandal over a cover-up of deaths in New York nursing homes and impeachment by the state legislature.
In an interview that day, reporter Jonathan Karl told Psaki, “Last spring, President Biden praised Andrew Cuomo’s leadership style as the Gold standard of leadership during the pandemic …… Now we have seen that Governor Cuomo allegedly underestimated the number of nursing Home deaths and misled the New York legislature by calling New York Congressman Ron King, who made threats to destroy King …… When it comes to pandemic leadership, does President Biden still think Andrew Cuomo is the gold standard?
Psaki sidestepped the question by responding, “We work with Governor Cuomo, just as we work with governors across the country, and he’s also the chairman of the NGA, so he plays an important role in making sure that we coordinate the delivery of assistance to the people of his state and states across the country. We will continue to do that. There will certainly be a process to conduct an investigation and we will leave it up to others to determine the appropriate law enforcement to determine the path forward.”
Still pursuing the earlier question, Carr then said, “But, Jen, my question is, does President Biden still believe that Andrew Cuomo represents the gold standard on leadership during this pandemic?”
Psaki didn’t answer, and after being pressed, she finally said, “…… The president, well, it doesn’t have to be a yes or no answer.”
Cuomo has been criticized for the scandal of letting New York senior nursing homes admit 9,000 patients who tested positive for the Chinese Communist virus last March 25, a decision directly related to thousands of additional deaths. In the wake of this, several New York Democratic lawmakers denounced that Cuomo had threatened lawmakers during his career and threatened to ruin the careers of people prepared to expose his scandal. Currently, the New York State Assembly has launched an impeachment investigation against Cuomo.
Cuomo’s administration is also accused of concealing and manipulating data by excluding the number of nursing home residents who died at the hospital. Last month, New York Attorney General Letitia James released a report that revealed that the true number of nursing home resident deaths may be 50 percent higher than claimed by New York State. James’ findings led Cuomo’s senior staffer, Melissa DeRosa, to admit that they fudged the death toll after former President Trump carefully investigated it.
In addition, Psaki revealed in a Sunday interview that Biden could travel to Texas “as soon as this week” to inspect the state’s devastation from the winter storm. At least 70 people have died in Texas since Feb. 11, after severe weather knocked out the state’s power grid and cut off water supplies.
Pusaki said Biden “wants to work” with Texas officials, but will continue to monitor the state’s situation until his arrival.
The weather event delayed the delivery of about 6 million doses of C.C.V. vaccine to communities and vaccination sites, but Psaki said the government has worked with the U.S. Postal Service and FedEx, among others, to deliver 2 million of the 6 million doses, and “we expect to fill the backlog of orders quickly this week. “
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