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Janice Dean, senior meteorologist for Fox News, went after NBC's Lester Holt on Saturday, claiming the "Nightly News" anchor censored a friend of hers in order to protect New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Cuomo had faced backlash this week after an investigation by state Attorney General Letitia James found that deaths among elderly New Yorkers in nursing homes from the coronavirus pandemic were far worse than the figures disclosed by state officials.
"So [NBC News' Lester Holt] censored one of my friends who lost a loved one in a nursing home," Dean tweeted Saturday. "She wanted to say ‘[Andrew Cuomo] failed us’ in the interview and they told her to say ‘New York failed us’ instead. The mainstream is still protecting this guy. Disgusting."
Dean then called Holt and Cuomo a "disgrace," and said, "The governor, his administration and his health department failed us."
Holt had not publicly responded to Dean as of Saturday night.
Fox News also reached out to NBC News for a comment.
Dean, who lost both of her in-laws to the virus in New York nursing homes, has been critical of Cuomo and his coronavirus response, even prior to this week’s report.
The New York governor has been under increased scrutiny after the report found after surveying more than 60 nursing homes, that official reports "undercounted by as much as 50%" the number of seniors who died after contracting the disease in a nursing home.
The attorney general’s office is still investigating the discrepancies.
CUOMO DEFENDS HANDLING OF NURSING HOME CRISIS AMID HARSH CRITICISM
But state Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker issued a statement Thursday that some believed attempted to excuse the varying figures.
Zucker said the state reported fatalities by the location where the death occurred, meaning if an individual died in a hospital after first contracting the disease in the nursing home, they were not counted as nursing home deaths.
"DOH [Department of Health] does not disagree that the number of people transferred from a nursing home to a hospital is an important data point, and is in the midst of auditing this data from nursing homes," Zucker said.
Cuomo did not help his case when some, like Dean, took offense to his response to the report, saying, "But who cares … died in a hospital, died in a nursing home, they died."
The Democrat then spoke about dealing with the loss of his father, former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo.
"The pain is so incredible and inexplicable," he said. "It’s tragedy."
But Cuomo’s attempt to sympathize with people mourning the loss of loved ones who died from the virus -- whether inside or outside of nursing homes -- also fell flat with many because the elder Cuomo did not did not die from the virus, and died in 2015.
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"His father didn’t die in a nursing home thanks to his son ordering Covid positive patients into their facility," Dean added angrily on twitter.
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