New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday night gave his first late-night interview on Comedy Central's The Daily Show With Trevor Noah, where he spoke about how being at the helm of the coronavirus pandemic has personally affected him.
In a clip from the interview, Noah spoke about his own experience amid the pandemic before asking the governor about his. "There’s no lying that everyone has been affected by this," the late-night host said. "You know, some days I feel like life is normal, some days I feel like this is the craziest thing we’ve ever experienced and it swings wildly. I know everyone has a different of it."
Noah went on to say, "I don’t know what it’s like to be a leader, a governor of a state with thousands of people are dying, and you are hearing this, you are seeing the stories, you’re responsible for these lives — you’re not responsible for the deaths, but you’re responsible for the lives of the people and keeping everybody as safe as you can."
The host then asked Cuomo, "What has that done for you as a person, how are you doing and how are you dealing with this?"
Answered Cuomo, "On the communication, which is so important because really this is all a voluntary program by New Yorkers, right, they changed their behavior and brought down the infection rate. But I gave them the information. Part of the information was personal, because this is traumatic, this is PTSD for an entire generation that will talk about this. And it is personal, so I try to communicate how I feel personally and my fear and my anxiety as part of this to say to you, you’re not alone — everybody’s feeling this, I’m feeling it too."
He continued, "The one differentiation is, I have to deal with the number of deaths in the state. Fifteen thousand people, Trevor. 9/11 had 2,700 people — that was supposed to be the worst experience of my life, I believed. Twenty-seven hundred people. This is 15,000 people. Four-hundred seventy-four yesterday. That weighs heavily on me."
Added the governor, "I can sit here and say to you, I believe that we did everything that could possibly be done. I don’t believe that we lost anyone because we didn’t have a bed and we didn’t have doctors and nurses. We did that. But we still lost 15,000 people. And I still am the governor and I still hold myself responsible."
Cuomo said that he continues to ask himself what else he could have done to curb the spread of the virus. "What else could I do? What else could I do? Was there anything else that we could be doing right now?" he asks himself. "That is a very heavy burden to bear," concluded the governor.
View the clip below.
