Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich posted an article on the website of Gingrich 360 (the consulting and media production group he founded) on October 13 in which he disputed the claims made by former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris that President Trump is personally responsible for the deaths of more than 215,000 Americans who have perished from COVID-19.
In his online rebuttal to the assertions made by Biden and Harris during the presidential and vice presidential debates, Gingrich said that those statements were not only “factually wrong, disingenuous, immoral, and disrespectful to the hundreds of thousands of Americans who are working every day to defeat the coronavirus and save lives,” but also completely ignore the “real, successful Trump administration efforts to save lives.”
Gingrich went on to state that the charges against Trump made by Biden and Harris ignore that fact the states with the most devastating losses — New York and New Jersey — are led by Democratic governors Andrew Cuomo and Phil Murphy, respectively. Gingrich noted that the combined total of coronavirus deaths in those two states account for nearly one-quarter (23 percent) of all American coronavirus deaths, according to figures released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
New York had a total of 32,990 COVID-19 deaths as of October 13, Gingrich cited the CDC. He explained that the principle reason for those large numbers was that on March 25, Cuomo forced nursing homes to admit nearly 6,300 recovering COVID patients from hospitals, a move that the former speaker called “devastating.” While the New York Department of Health reports total deaths in these facilities, the New York Post has reported out that this figure ignores nursing home residents who died in the hospital.
Gingrich also cited statements quoted by Representative Elise Stefankik (R-N.Y.) in an August 20 Fox News article, Stefanik charging that many of New York’s deaths were caused by Cuomo’s “failed and failed nursing home policies.”
“We lost more people in the state of New York than any other state across the country because of this mismanagement by the governor of New York state,” Stefanik said.
Likewise, neighboring New Jersey had 16,174 COVID-19 deaths as of October 13 — the highest per capita rate in the nation. Gingrich cited a report that nearly 53 percent of people who have died of COVID-19 in the state were living or working in state-run nursing home facilities that were forced to accept COVID-19 patients from area hospitals. Yet, notes Gingrich, the national media is also ignoring “Gov. Phil Murphy’s responsibility for this fatal incompetence — and [is] seeking to blame the president.”
The article concludes: “President Trump — and the brave men and women in our public health system — have saved 2 million [people].”
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