On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Cuomo Primetime,” host Chris Cuomo stated that the high number of coronavirus deaths “came because of how we denied the reality in this country.” And that “misinformation has been a killer, and it has been a reality that was scripted to suit political interests.”
Cuomo said, “We pay attention. We show respect. We certainly know better than to ignore their pain. But then you look at what we’ve done altogether, and that is what we’ve done, haven’t we? Half a million are gone. And many were not inevitable. These deaths came because of how we denied the reality in this country.”
He later added that the death toll “has gotten this bad because too many were in denial, and yes, because we had a president that played to that because he thought it worked for him and so did his party. And yes, the media, too. We haven’t always played up the death count with the urgency that we did in the beginning. Why? Because it seemed to fall on deaf ears. Me included, and it was wrong. But tonight, we do what is right. Do you know that we’ve never once stopped to honor the dead? We have never once come together as a nation to mourn. Because we have never really wanted to own the reality.”
Cuomo further stated, “I think it’s just part of the job that we do here to not let anyone forget how and why we got here. One year ago this week, then-sitting President Trump told us COVID cases would go from 15 down to zero. He told us this would all magically disappear. We suspected he was lying. We knew he was ignorant. And soon thereafter, we would confirm our suspicions that he was dead wrong. But we really never grasped that we were not just making ourselves sick, but that we were killing ourselves, and that president wasn’t going to tell anyone any different. Like President Biden said tonight, misinformation has been a killer, and it has been a reality that was scripted to suit political interests.”
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