Speaking at a press conference on Monday while accompanied by Dr. Anthony Fauci, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo likened the two of them to actors Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. “We’re like the modern day De Niro and Pacino,” said the governor.
The comment came as Cuomo bragged that New York’s infection rate was low, claiming, “Doctor, on the question of this state’s infection rate versus other states, we’re lower than all states besides Vermont, Maine, Hawaii. Does that surprise you, and how do you explain that?”
Fauci lauded Cuomo, stating, “I have to say being a New Yorker, Governor, it doesn’t surprise me. You guys, as you and I have discussed on many phone calls that we’ve had, you got hit with a sucker punch right from the beginning, when the cases came in from Europe, and the Northeastern corridor, particularly New York State, particularly the metropolitan area, got hit really, really badly. You recovered from that, was after you got hit badly, your baseline level went way, way down and very, very low, and then you did things which were the appropriate way to avoid getting re-surging [cases]. So the bad news, and it’s painful for me to see it from a distance to my place of birth, but you guys got really slammed.”
“And then you rebounded and you rebounded in a way that you kept your test positivity low, because you did the prudent things that you need to do,” Fauci continued. “And I was following it from here in Washington, and I was seeing that whenever it looked like things were getting a little out of hand, you tightened the rope a little bit. And then when things went back, you eased up a little bit. So I’m not surprised that your infection rate is really low because I think you were doing the right things after you had a really serious hit in the beginning when you were there in the late winter, early spring.”
Cuomo then posited that if the two men sold the idea of taking the coronavirus vaccine, it would be successful, boasting that they would be like De Niro and Pacino: “Doctor, on this education of the population of both the small spreads and even more now the vaccine, ‘Take the vaccine, it’s safe,’ I think that’s going to be difficult to do. I think you have tremendous credibility, not just across the country, but across this state. And I think your voice on saying that the vaccines are safe would be important. I said that as soon as the vaccine is deemed ready and safe, I’ll be the first one to take a vaccine. Maybe we enlist you, I’ll do it with you. We’ll do an ad telling New Yorkers it’s safe to take the vaccine, to put us together. We’re like the modern day De Niro and Pacino. You can be whichever you want, you can be the De Niro or Pacino. Fauci and Cuomo, I’ll give you a… Who do you want to be? De Niro or Pacino? Which one do you want to be?”
Fauci hesitated, “I love them both. I love them both. I don’t want to insult one or the other. If I say one, I don’t want to hurt the feelings of the other. Who is the politician?”
Cuomo was roundly mocked on social media:
is Cuomo basing his own personal comparison on the total number of people dead at the hands of Pacino and De Niro's characters in their respective movies combined https://t.co/kEf9z5HwRO
— Matt Binder (@MattBinder) December 7, 2020
Really? His modesty is overwhelming. https://t.co/QCYs0ssrmQ
— Lisa Myers (@LisaMyers) December 7, 2020
Gov. Cuomo enjoys the pandemic like no one else. https://t.co/5bFgURrOgs
— Kelly Jane Torrance (@KJTorrance) December 8, 2020
This makes sense because at the ends of their movies usually everyone is dead. https://t.co/toSqnDB56w
— Sean Burns (@SeanMBurns) December 7, 2020