Fox News just handed a contributor contract and a co-host chair on a brand-new podcast to the woman who sat at Andrew Cuomo’s right hand while New York shoved COVID-positive patients into nursing homes and then hid the body count.
According to a Fox News Media press release, Melissa DeRosa is now a “newly named FOX News contributor.” She will appear on the premiere of the network’s new all-female roundtable podcast, the Girls, which debuts October 1.
The first episode features Rachel Campos-Duffy, Harris Faulkner, Kat Timpf, former ESPN host Samantha Ponder, and DeRosa.
Fox’s own announcement describes her as a “veteran democratic strategist” who “previously held several senior roles in former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration, becoming the first woman to serve as secretary to the governor.” That is a very polite way of saying she was Cuomo’s gatekeeper during the deadliest nursing-home policy in America.
In February 2021, The Gateway Pundit reported the leak that blew the cover off the operation. In a piece titled “BOMBSHELL: Top NY Official Admits Cuomo Hid Nursing Home Data So Feds Wouldn’t Find Out,” we detailed DeRosa’s remarks on a private conference call with New York Democratic lawmakers.
According to the New York Post, which first published the audio, DeRosa apologized to those Democrats for withholding the state’s nursing-home death tally. She said the administration “froze” after then-President Donald Trump “turns this into a giant political football.”
Her words, as reported by the Post:
“He starts tweeting that we killed everyone in nursing homes. He starts going after [New Jersey Gov. Phil] Murphy, starts going after [California Gov. Gavin] Newsom, starts going after [Michigan Gov.] Gretchen Whitmer.”
Then came the part that should have ended her media career:
“And basically, we froze. Because then we were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we give to you guys, what we start saying, was going to be used against us while we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation.”
That is not a “reporting lag.” That is a senior state official admitting, on tape, that the Cuomo shop sat on the death numbers because they were afraid the Trump Justice Department would use the truth against them.
