New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo is writing a book about his response to the coronavirus, his leadership advice and his relationship with the Trump administration, according to the Associated Press.
Crown Publishing announced “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic” is set to be released Oct. 13, only three weeks away from the presidential election, per the Associated Press.
We’re excited to share this new book from Governor Andrew Cuomo, ‘American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic’, on sale October 13, 2020.
Available now for preorder everywhere books are sold! More via @AP: https://t.co/kedOBJ9fPs pic.twitter.com/6XGEMgaX77
— Crown Publishing (@CrownPublishing) August 18, 2020
“In his own voice, Andrew Cuomo chronicles in ‘American Crisis’ the ingenuity and sacrifice required of so many to fight the pandemic, sharing his personal reflections and the decision-making that shaped his policy, and offers his frank accounting and assessment of his interactions with the federal government and the White House, as well as other state and local political and health officials,” Crown said, according to the AP.
In an excerpt from the upcoming book that Crown shared with The Associated Press, Cuomo emphasizes the importance of confronting fear.
“The questions are what do you do with the fear and would you succumb to it,” he wrote. “I would not allow the fear to control me. The fear kept my adrenaline high and that was a positive. But I would not let the fear be a negative, and I would not spread it. Fear is a virus also.”
Cuomo had been teasing the possibility of a book, telling WAMC in July that he wanted to document “the entire experience, because if we don’t learn from this then it will really compound the whole crisis that we’ve gone through.”
However, Cuomo has come under fire from critics who say his policies resulted in thousands of deaths at New York nursing homes.
Cuomo issued an executive order on March 25 ordering nursing homes and other long-term care facilities to accept patients from hospitals who had tested positive for the coronavirus. While he rescinded the policy on May 11, more than 6,400 nursing home patients have died since the pandemic began after having been sent back to their care facility. More than 20,000 nursing home staffers were infected in March and April, according to the Associated Press.
An investigation by the AP found the state’s death toll of nursing home patients could be significantly higher than what is being reported, since New York only counts residents who died on nursing home property and not those who were transported to hospitals and died there. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: New York Admits Knowingly Undercounting Nursing Home Deaths After Quietly Changing Reporting Rules)
Cuomo’s actions haven’t gone unnoticed, with President Donald Trump nudging the issue during an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller.
“Governors made mistakes, they made big mistakes. Certain governors made big mistakes, put people into nursing homes that shouldn’t have been there that were heavily infected. And it spread no different than spreading in a larger area,” he said referencing the first major outbreak in in the U.S which took place in a Seattle nursing home.
“I mean, your first real tragedy was the nursing home in the state of Washington. Governor Inslee. They should have learned from that because that nursing home was wiped out, right? Almost everybody died from that one nursing home, and the governors made mistakes. They made big mistakes. They should not have done what they did,” the president continued.
“Now people watch it. You know, we’ve learned a lot about this disease, but, they’ve made tragic, I would call it tragic mistakes. In particular, certain governors, I won’t get into their names, but certain governors, they didn’t do it on purpose, but they made mistakes.”
The president reiterated the claim, tweeting that Cuomo is responsible for nursing home deaths on Monday.
Now AP estimates that the real Cuomo number of people killed because of his total incompetence is 11,000, not the 6000 that was originally thought!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 18, 2020
The president’s tweet comes after Cuomo criticized his response to the coronavirus while speaking at the Democratic National Convention.