#Gaetz slams media for putting Cuomo on pedestal over COVID response

GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz blasted the media for ​portraying Gov. Andrew Cuomo as an “oracle” in his coronavirus response — after it emerged that his top aide admitted that the administration covered up the number of nursing home deaths.

“The media is absolutely culpable in advancing this mythology of Cuomo that is belied by the facts, and the facts keep getting uglier and uglier, both for the governor of New York and the media,” Gaetz told Fox News‘ Jeanine Pirro on Saturday.

Gaetz said at the same time the media fawned over Cuomo at his daily nationally televised briefings as the “great oracle of response to the coronavirus, they were conducting the flu d’etat against our president, acting as though everything he was doing was causing this virus to be more deadly.”

The Florida Republican said former President Donald Trump put the country on the “path to the fastest, safest vaccine development the world has ever known.”

He said Trump’s efforts are still saving lives even as Cuomo’s nursing home deaths controversy is just beginning to be revealed.

“Here you had Gov. Cuomo potentially destroying records that evidenced this scheme that was a very deadly one. Everybody is familiar with the Times Square game of card hustles. But here they were playing three-card Monte with grandma, moving folks from nursing homes in the hospital and then injecting the virus right back into nursing homes,” Gaetz said.

The Post revealed last week that top Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa during a video conference call with state Democratic leaders told them that the governor’s office rejected a legislative request for the numbers because it feared the Trump administration would turn it into a “giant political football.”

“He starts tweeting that we killed everyone in nursing homes,” DeRosa said. “He starts going after [New Jersey Gov. Phil] Murphy, starts going after [California Gov. Gavin] Newsom, starts going after [Michigan Gov.] Gretchen Whitmer.”

A number of lawmakers, including former Gov. George Pataki, have called for a probe into the Cuomo administration by President Biden’s Justice Department, state Attorney General Letitia James and the state Legislature.

“This is one of the worst things I have seen in New York State government, and I’ve been following this for a long time,” Pataki said​.