Audio & Rush Transcript: Governor Cuomo is a Guest on MSNBC with Brian Williams

Brian Williams: The Governor of State of New York Andrew Cuomo has been kind enough to join us ostensibly to talk about that state's reopening, which we will do but, Governor, by way of thanking you for being with us, I got to start about what we have witnessed over the past 12 hours to 24 hours. Not a word from the President today, no presence last night on the part of the Governor of Minnesota, the Mayor of Minneapolis and as a cascading effect, no police or fire presence, can you imagine in New York in the City of New York and the State of New York choosing to surrender for starters a police precinct?

Governor Cuomo: Brian, good to be with you. Look, this is a terrible situation. Our thoughts and prayers are with George Floyd's family, all New Yorkers join me in that, as I'm sure all Americans do. I understand the frustration from the protesters, et cetera all across the country. Because Brian, let's be honest for a second, this is not a new story, we tend to cover incidents, but this is a continuing narrative, this is another chapter in the book called, "Injustice and Inequality in America," and it's been going on for 30 years, right? Rodney King, Los Angeles was 30 years ago. Amadou Diallo, Abner Louima in New York, 20 years ago. It's just replayed over and over and over again. We just saw the Ahmaud Arbery case, and what's the difference? It's been 30 years, you have this continuing inequality, you have then coronavirus on top of it that's killing more African Americans than anyone else by percentage. So, you can see the constant frustration with the injustice especially in the justice system, and it's just gone on and on and on and people are frustrated. Now, you shouldn't break the law, there should be no illegality, but frustration certainly.

Brian Williams: Let me ask you, the lawyer in you, the charging document, just and I can't believe we're being so molecular about timing here, it's a gruesome business, but here's what it says, the police officer's knee was on his neck for additional two minutes and 43 seconds after Mr. Floyd became unresponsive. The police officer's knee was on Mr. Floyd's neck for a total of 8 minutes and 46 seconds. Governor, what do you have to believe about the police officer to go for a murder one charge as opposed to murder three? The family is asking that the charge be upgraded from murder three to murder one.

Governor Cuomo: Yeah, the question is going to be intent and deliberateness of the actions and I was a former prosecutor, and I don't like to pre-judge any prosecutor's actions. The prosecutor in this case said they could charge up depending on what they find. And it's not uncommon to see the charges escalated when they get more information. Thank God we're in a day and age where we have these video tapes and all this footage that we can review afterwards, otherwise situations like this just wouldn't come to light, right? But let's see what the prosecutor does. The evidence to me is damning. In this state I think it would support a murder charge based on what we know. Now the prosecutor alluded to there's evidence you don't know about. He should speak about that because the silence is deafening and let's see if they charge up in this case but it's going to be a clear question of fact.

Brian Williams: To the purpose of your appearance here today I'll let you tell the viewers what you've decided about New York, which was of course as you've been dealing with, 24/7 nonstop the US epicenter of coronavirus - what does reopening look like in New York?

Governor Cuomo: Well, Brian, you're right. New York city was the epicenter and New York State has had more case than any other state in this country, more cases than many countries on the globe. Remember what happened to New York when they write the history books. We were told about the China virus, the China virus. This virus came from Europe. We were all looking West and the virus came from the East. Nobody talked about the virus coming from Europe. We had 3 million flights of people coming from Europe, January, February, March and that's where the virus came from and then it spread once it hit New York. We were totally blindsided. We did have the worst case and in some ways, Brian, that forced the smartest and most aggressive response. All the numbers are down. They're way down. Other parts of the country you still see the curve going up. June 8 we're going to open Phase 1, and Phase 1 will bring about 400,000 people back to work. It is a gradual turning on of the economy. We've done it in other parts of the state but the gradual nature of it allows us to calibrate the actions and New York City's a complex organism so the public transportation has to work, et cetera, and we'll phase it in starting the 8th so that's exciting and from where we were, you know, it's about 90 days which is a lifetime in some ways, but in some ways it's not considering what we had to do and what we were dealing with so we're excited.

Brian Williams: How do you possibly go about advising citizens, a very basic choice that especially a lot of essential workers have, police, fire, ConEd and so on and so on, subway versus bus, if they can get in a cab or a Lyft service. How are you going to advise the people who make New York City go and thus must get to work and by the way have been finding a way to get to work this whole time?

Governor Cuomo: It's a good question, Brian. They have been getting to work and they have been taking public transportation. I'll tell you an interesting fact - the essential workers, quote/unquote police, nurses, doctors, all the frontline people who you would expect to have a higher infection rate actually have a lower infection rate than the general population. It's counterintuitive but it makes the point that PPE works. Those masks work. Frankly they should have told us earlier about the masks and how effective they were. So individual responsibility, the PPE, what situations you put yourself in, that all is going to determine the future. You know, forget government. This is beyond government. This is what the people do and their actions will determine what happens with that viral spread. But its individual responsibility, if they want to drive and Uber, Lyft, et cetera, that's up to them. They haven't been doing that. The essential workers have been taking public transportation, and again their infection rate is down. Now, we're disinfecting our public transportation system, which have never happened before. We're disinfecting subway cars, buses, et cetera. We have UV lights. We're requiring masks on public transportation. But that has been operating all along. It has never stopped. It's an individual decision. I understand the anxiety. But it's clean and it's safe. You have to be smart and you have to keep distance where you can. But people have been using it every day all through this.

Brian Williams: Finally, Governor, I heard your kind of viewers guide to consumers yesterday. You told people at you're briefing, "You're going to hear a lot of talk about companies getting lean after the coronavirus." That means firing people, that means layoffs, and for a guy in your position you also have the tax base of all those towering structures in Manhattan that you don't want slowly emptied out. So, how do you police against something like that?

Governor Cuomo: Brian, I think you're exactly right. I'll tell you what my crystal ball says, it says remember history and remember the past because it's going to repeat itself. Remember what happened after the mortgage fraud financial crisis? We had all those bailouts for all the big banks - they had a party and the taxpayer got the bill. You're going to see the same thing here. You're going to see corporations laying off workers, saying they're restructuring, they're getting lean, they learned lessons from the pandemic. They're going to take billions of dollars from the government and then they're going to lay off workers. That's what's going to happen. And what I've said to Washington, they should stop that now in its tracks. If you take a dollar of government money, you should not be allowed to lay off workers, you have to hire back the same number of workers pre-pandemic as post-pandemic if you take a government bailout. You want to lay off workers? It's not going to be subsidized by the taxpayer. But I believe that's what's going to happen. That's why I don't believe this economy just comes back, rebounds straight up. This isn't a basketball. This is a football and it's going to come back up at a weird angle, and the big corporations will be fine and the workers will get stiffed. It's always the story and I believe it is going to be the story again here.

Brian Williams: Governor of the State of New York, Andrew Cuomo. Governor, thanks for being generous with your time. We appreciate it.

Governor Cuomo: Thank you, Brian.