Andrew Cuomo Says He Wouldn’t Send His Own Mother to Nursing Home

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who ordered nursing homes to accept coronavirus patients for more than six weeks during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, told MSNBC on Wednesday that he would not send his own mother to one.

Cuomo was interviewed by MSNBC hosts Katy Tur and Chuck Todd, who asked him whether he believed he could keep nursing homes safe during a possible “second wave” of the virus in the fall.

“Can we keep nursing homes safe? No,” he replied. “Can you keep a hospital safe? No. Can you keep any gathering safe? No.”

Todd followed up: “Let me put in different terms, Governor. Would you advise a friend to put their parents in a senior facility if if they thought it was time right now? Or would you wait until this thing passed?”

Cuomo replied: “If I were advising a friend, I would say you have a vulnerable person. Best to keep them at home and not put them in a congregate facility. Keep them if a situation where you have the most control. That is the blunt truth. That’s what I would do with my mother.”

Asked whether he regretted ordering nursing homes to accept coronavirus patients, Cuomo claimed that the nursing homes had been required to turn such patients away if they could not care for them, and that New York State had merely been following guidelines set by the federal government that banned “discrimination” against coronavirus patients.

He did not explain how nursing homes were to determine if they could treat coronavirus patients when he had barred them from even testing for the disease.

More than 4,300 coronavirus patients were sent to New York nursing homes, according to the Associated Press.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, is available for pre-order. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.