New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo‘s bullying tactics were common knowledge among his government colleagues, former New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind said on Friday.
Hikind told “Fox & Friends” that the people “defending Cuomo are very intimidated by him,” adding that he “intimidates people and is a bully.”
“They work for him. They’re scared out of their skins, for God’s sake. He is a person who everybody knows, people in government who have dealt with him. This is not a great secret. The public is now finding out that their governor is a fraud,” he added.
Hikind reacted to New York State Assemblyman Ron Kim’s assertion this week that Gov. Andrew Cuomo threatened to “destroy” him in a spat over the state’s nursing home crisis marked the latest instance in which a political rival accused the longtime governor of bullying tactics.
Cuomo and Kim, both Democrats, have engaged in a public war of words over what transpired on a phone call between the two last week, hours after the New York Post reported that one of the governor’s aides, Melissa DeRosa, admitted his office withheld data on COVID-19 deaths at nursing homes. Many in left-leaning media have ignored the story, notably CNN, which had given Cuomo’s brother, Chris, free rein to conduct friendly, comical interviews with the scandal-plagued governor.
In a series of media appearances, Kim alleged that Cuomo threatened to ruin the assemblyman’s career unless he walked back remarks to the Post in which he said the administration was “trying to dodge having any incriminating evidence.”
Hikind said that Cuomo’s “bullying and behavior resulted in thousands and thousands of people dying unnecessarily.”
“We’re not talking about a minor issue where we disagree. We’re talking about people’s lives. We’re talking about seniors, grandfathers, grandmothers, mothers, fathers, people who never found out exactly why they lost their loved ones,” Cuomo said.
“The governor was lying from the beginning and he still doesn’t have the guts to do the right thing. By the way, he will never apologize because one of his lessons of leadership. Imagine, he was teaching us about leadership in his book. Well, one of his lessons in leadership is always to blame someone else. Always find someone else to blame.”
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Speaking at a press conference last week, the governor said his team told staffers at the New York State Assembly and Senate at the time that their request for data on nursing homes was “paused.”
Cuomo said his team cooperated “fully” with the DOJ’s initial request for data last August. He said that his team learned of a second DOJ request for data last October after reading about it in the New York Post.
Fox News’ Thomas Barrabi contributed to this report.
