Texas Republican Representative Dan Crenshaw criticized New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday for taking a victory lap for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and questioned the fact that thousands of New Yorkers died in nursing homes.
Crenshaw told “Fox News @Night” on Wednesday that Cuomo “took affirmative action that really hurt New Yorkers.”
“What was that?” Crenshaw asked. “You put patients who got infected in nursing homes, you can’t forget this, he actually took steps that hurt people and is responsible for the large number of deaths there.”
Crenshaw made the comments two days after Cuomo unveiled a poster he designed called the “New York Tough” that suggests it captures the journey he went through his state while tackling the pandemic.
The poster shows a mountain with essential workers pulling a rope symbolizing “flattening the curve.”
Crenshaw said Cuomo’s actions “resulted in this curve which was the exact curve we were supposed to avoid and then he goes and makes this art poster about it and tries to pretend it’s a good thing.”
“It’s really amazing and I think it really offends a lot of New Yorkers like it should,” he continued.
Speaking to MSNBC last month, Cuomo defended his administration’s nursing home policy that critics say contributed to thousands of deaths from coronavirus.
When asked if he is responsible for order and “what role he may have played in those deaths,” Cuomo said, “Republicans are definitely playing politics.”
“We had more people who died in nursing homes than anywhere else because we had more people who died, because the federal government lost the boat and never told us that this virus came from Europe and not from China,” he continued.
Cuomo has received scathing criticism for his early request requiring nursing homes to accept COVID-19 patients who had been discharged from hospitals, effectively placing them in the same facilities that house the demographic groups most vulnerable to the virus.
Cuomo has insisted that New York’s original nursing home policy was in line with a March 13 directive from the Trump administration’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Diseases (CDC) that went out to all states on how to control nursing homes.
The guidelines say that a nursing home “can accept a resident diagnosed with COVID-19 … as long as the facility can follow CDC’s guidance,” and requires any newly admitted resident with a COVID-19 case. is placed in a designated COVID. 19 care unit. The guide also says that “nursing homes should admit anyone they would normally admit to their facilities, including people from hospitals where a COVID-19 case was / is present.”
New York, among other states, said at the time that nursing homes cannot refuse to take patients from hospitals just because they have the coronavirus. After mounting criticism that the policy put the most vulnerable people at risk and contributed to a large number of deaths, New York reversed course on May 10. Hospitals can now only send patients who have tested negative for COVID-19 to nursing homes.
Host Shannon Bream said Wednesday that the situation in New York “was serious” and “terrifying” and that New York appears to be “out of date,” but asked, “What do you think of this idea that the governor is kind. ? ” Does she seem to have been slapped on the back by many media outlets and herself?
“I am always amazed at his ability to make false narratives,” Crenshaw said in response.
“If you are going to be intellectually honest in criticizing our leaders, you should be able to look back in time and say you took action, it was clear that you should have gone left and right instead.”
“A lot of people like to criticize Republican governors for reopening too soon, what it really means is that you’re saying they were wrong to give people too much freedom,” he continued. “If that sounds ridiculous, of course, it is, but Governor Cuomo did something much worse than that, he took affirmative action that really hurt New Yorkers.”
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In a statement sent to Fox News, Rich Azzopardi, Governor Cuomo’s senior adviser, said: “Another day, another Republican attack trying to distract itself from the many, many failures of the Trump administration during this pandemic and its lack of action that we are. the only nation on earth that does not implement a national Covid-19 strategy. ”
“Experts now say the virus was in New York in February, if not earlier, and a DOH [Department of Health] The study, which was reviewed by experts from Northwell Health and Mount Sinai, definitely showed that the increase in deaths on the premises was early, probably caused by asymptomatic employees through no fault of their own and prior to the March 25 directive, “Azzopardi continued. .
“No one is buying this Republican Party political smoke screen and they should remove it and wear a mask.”
Brooke Singman and The Associated Press of Fox News contributed to this report.
