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On Tuesday, the “fact checkers” at Snopes ardently defended Gov. Andrew Cuomo by attacking an accurate tweet as "Mostly False." The headline was:
Did Gov. Cuomo Say It Was ‘Bad News’ Pfizer Vaccine Progress Came Under Trump?
The correct answer is Yes. It came from a Good Morning America interview on November 9. Tom Elliott of Grabien tweeted: @NYGovCuomo says it’s “bad news” Pfizer’s Covid vaccine came during the Trump Admin; says he’s going to work w/ other governors to “stop” distribution “before it does damage".
They also provided the transcript, which proved his summary was accurate:
STEPHANOPOULOS: We were talking yesterday about the importance of vaccine distribution in the next two months. What do you make of this news?
CUOMO: Well, it’s good news-bad news, George. The good news is the Pfizer tests look good, and we’ll have have a vaccine shortly. The bad news is that it’s about two months before Joe Biden takes over, and that means this administration is going to be implementing a vaccine plan. The vaccine plan is very important and it’s probably the most ambitious undertaken since COVID began. Just to put it in focus, we did 120 million COVID tests in this nation, over seven months — scrambling, doing everything we can. We now have to do 330 million vaccinations, maybe twice. My state does more testing than any state in the United States, we did 12 million tests. We have to do 20 million vaccines, and the Trump administration is rolling out the vaccination plan, and I believe it’s flawed. I believe it learns nothing from the past. They’re basically going to have the private providers do it, and that’s going to leave out all sorts of communities that were left out the first time, when COVID ravaged them...
But you have two months and we can’t let this vaccination plan go forward the way the Trump administration is designing it, because Biden can’t undo it two months later. We’ll be in the midst of it. And I’m going — I’ve been talking to governors across the nation about that — how can we shape the Trump administration vaccine plan, to fix it or stop it before it does damage.