By: The Editorial Board – wsj.com – May 31, 2023

The 2024 presidential race is already wild, and the strangest moment so far may be the mutual Covid admiration society of Donald Trump and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. In 2020 they were mortal political enemies, but now they’re uniting to praise their performance in order to trash the far better Covid judgment and governance of Ron DeSantis in Florida.

Mr. Trump will say anything to hurt the Sunshine State Governor now running against him for President. Last week he said in a video posted on Truth Social: “How about the fact that he had the third most deaths of any state having to do with the China virus or Covid? Even Cuomo did better, he was number four.”

Mr. Cuomo returned the compliment on Tuesday from his political exile, tweeting that “Donald Trump tells the truth, finally. New York got hit first and worst but New Yorkers acted responsibly. Florida’s policy of denial allowed Covid to spread and that’s why they had a very large second wave.”

Where to begin? The media feted Mr. Cuomo for his handling of Covid in 2020, but his harsh lockdowns continue to have baleful effects on the state’s economy as its recovery lags. We also know Mr. Cuomo made a literally fatal March 2020 decision to admit Covid patients to nursing homes. His administration then tried to fudge the number of nursing-home deaths from Covid.

In sharp contrast, Mr. DeSantis demonstrated true leadership. To the extent Florida had a second Covid “wave” during the summer of 2020, it was because it never had a big first wave in the spring.

Despite having a higher proportion of elderly citizens who were more vulnerable, Mr. DeSantis resisted Anthony Fauci and the media to keep his state’s schools and economy going. He lifted the lockdown in May 2020 and removed all restrictions on business capacity in September. That autumn he fought the teachers union in court to reopen schools far earlier than most states did.

Mr. Trump’s claim about Florida’s relative Covid deaths is a distortion. Florida had more total deaths than New York, but Florida’s population is older and thus more vulnerable to Covid. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that age-adjusted deaths were 245 per 100,000 residents for Florida against 311.5 for New York.

Mr. Trump is trying to deflect from his own Covid record and his Administration’s year-long deference to Dr. Fauci. “Fifteen days to slow the spread” of Covid in March 2020 turned into months of bowing to the healthcare and media clerisy on closing schools and keeping much of the economy shut down. The damage from lost learning and livelihoods has been horrific and paved the way for Joe Biden’s election victory in 2020.

The Trump-Cuomo Covid bromance would be hilarious if it weren’t so deceitful. It’s a lesson for Republican primary voters in what they’ll get again if they renominate the former President who never sidelined Dr. Fauci.

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Source: The Trump-Cuomo Covid Bromance – WSJ