CNN’s Jake Tapper and Sanjay Gupta slammed Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Monday over his comments concerning health experts in his state.
In the broadcast of his show “The Lead With Jake Tapper,” Tapper was joined by Sanjay Gupta to discuss the coronavirus vaccine rollout and testing. The conversation turned to Cuomo’s comments when Tapper brought up The New York Times piece published Monday about the resignations of some of New York’s top health officials.
Tapper played a video clip of Cuomo’s Friday press conference in which he stated, “When I say experts in air quotes, it sounds like I’m saying I don’t really trust the experts. Because I don’t. Because I don’t.” (RELATED: Andrew Cuomo Warned New Yorkers To Avoid Travel During Snowstorm — And Then He Drove To NYC)
“Sanjay, that seems like a wildly irresponsible thing for a leader to say during a pandemic. We need the public to believe the experts. Do you have any concerns?,” Tapper asked Gupta after playing the video.
“I’m really quite stunned that that’s what he said, and I’m curious to talk to him and understand, clarify that a bit,” Gupta responded. “I mean, it is true that New York has had success. They had terrible numbers in the spring of last year but were able to bring those numbers under control. A lot of that was because of the experts and because of sort of carrying through on plans that sometimes are hard to sort of understand at the time.”
New York has had more deaths attributed to the coronavirus than every state and U.S. territory since the start of the pandemic, totaling 43,634 as of Feb. 1.
Nine of New York’s Department of Health officials resigned in recent months, reportedly after becoming frustrated with Cuomo. They also reported that Cuomo’s office failed to inform the department of changes to its plans to handle the pandemic, which contributed to the resignations.
“But with time actually making more and more sense I think it’s irresponsible. I think the biggest question is, there’s enough people out there who are already hesitant,” Gupta continued. “They don’t believe the virus. They don’t believe in getting a vaccine. They don’t understand the value of testing. If you start to take away some of the credence of these experts, I think that’s really, really harmful, especially now.”