[dropacp]CNN announced Wednesday that the network would no longer allow host Chris Cuomo to interview or cover his brother, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, after the host ignored the nursing home scandal currently swirling around his brother.
From the New York Post:
Last year, Chris Cuomo repeatedly interviewed his older brother about the coronavirus pandemic, engaging in often-cringey banter that initially helped boost the ratings for the 9 p.m. “Cuomo Prime Time.”
But the controversy over the Cuomo administration’s admitted cover-up of nursing home death numbers — exclusively revealed by The Post last week — hasn’t been mentioned on Chris’ hour-long show.
That’s despite coverage on other CNN shows, including Sunday’s “State of the Union,” on which host Jake Tapper criticized the state Health Department’s since-rescinded March 25 directive for nursing homes to admit COVID-19 patients.
Host Jake Tapper was particularly critical of Gov. Cuomo, saying his show has requested “dozens” of interviews related to the nursing home scandal over the past year and week but the governor that the governor declined while hiding the true data “from the public.”
The news comes as Gov. Cuomo has been under fire from members of his own party, many of whom are circulating legislation aimed at stripping him of his emergency public health powers that he has largely used to govern the state during the pandemic.
The New York Times also reported Wednesday that the F.B.I. and the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York were in the beginning stages of an investigation into the governor’s administration.
But Cuomo has continued to defend his use of emergency powers and his decision to withhold some of nursing home data from state lawmakers, insisting that the questions swirling around his administration were all politically motivated.
CNN claimed Wednesday that the rule against their host covering his older brother had been in place since 2013, but was lifted during an “extraordinary time” to allow Americans to see the challenges being faced during a crisis that has impacted millions of families.
Cuomo has in the past defended his brother’s use of nursing homes in the early stages of the pandemic, including in one heated exchange with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in which Cruz accused the governor of endangering the lives of New York’s senior population.
“My brother was the first one to say that there was a learning curve and that mistakes were made and that they changed things as soon as they could,” Cuomo said to Cruz.
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