Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Thursday called it a “tremendous personal benefit” to have led New York state amid the coronavirus crisis — during which he scored $5.1 million for his pandemic memoir.
In a speech to his fellow governors that was loaded with presumably unintentional double meanings, Cuomo told them that they all “have a new credibility.”
“Very few people were going through what we went through and we went through it together,” he said.
“And speaking for myself, it was a tremendous personal benefit.”
Cuomo’s controversial book deal is the subject of pending probes by federal and state officials who are also investigating his administration’s cover-up of the state’s nursing home death toll from COVID-19.
Cuomo — who’s further facing sexual harassment and groping allegations from a string of current and former female aides — also said during his speech that before the pandemic, students would ask him, “What does a governor do?”
“No students ask that question anymore,” the three-term Democrat said.
“People know what governors do.”
In a 10-minute, virtual address to the National Governors Association, Cuomo said of the pandemic — which killed an estimated 50,000-plus New Yorkers, including about 15,000 nursing home residents — “I feel confident in saying we did the best work that we could do under the circumstances.”
“The circumstances were impossible. But we did the best that we could do,” he said, adding, “And I’m proud of the effort that we led together and I believe we saved lives.”
Tracey Alvino, whose dad, Daniel, died after contracting COVID-19 in a Long Island nursing home, was outraged by the remarks.
“If that’s Cuomo’s best, I’d hate to see his worst,” Alvino said.
“Fifteen thousand senior citizens in nursing homes were killed because of his fatally flawed decisions that were not based on science…His personal benefit was $5.1 million in his bank account from his book.”
Danielle Messina, whose father, Samuel, died in a Staten Island nursing home, also blasted Cuomo for patting himself on the back.
“It’s easy for him to say. He didn’t lose a loved one.”
“Cuomo gave family members and friends private testing instead of testing people in the nursing homes…He hurt the most vulnerable.”
Cuomo’s startling speech marked the end of his one-year chairmanship of the National Governors Association.
The incoming chairman is Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican who publicly stood in for Cuomo earlier this year as the scandal over New York’s nursing home deaths heated up.
On Feb. 12, both men were among a bipartisan group of governors and mayors who traveled to the White House to discuss federal COVID-19 relief funding with President Biden.
The high-profile meeting came just hours after The Post exclusively revealed that top Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa had privately told Democratic state lawmakers that his administration hid the true nursing home death toll from them — and the public — out of fear that it would “be used against us” by then-President Donald Trump’s Justice Department.
Cuomo avoided reporters gathered outside the White House, leaving Hutchinson to appear in his place.
In the wake of The Post’s scoop, the FBI and the US Attorney’s Office launched the first of several investigations that are plaguing Cuomo.
He has denied any wrongdoing.
