Audio & Rush Transcript: Governor Cuomo is a Guest on MSNBC's the Reidout With Joy Reid

Earlier today, Governor Cuomo was a guest on MSNBC's The ReidOut with Joy Reid.

AUDIO is available here.

A rush transcript of the governor's interview is available below:

Joy Reid: Governor Cuomo, thank you so much for being here. Scott Atlas who has no experience in communicable diseases but who is Trump's favorite doctor now because he tells him what he wants to hear, he tweeted that about Gretchen Whitmer, who is implementing new lockdown orders in her state, no order to try to slow the spread in her state because she is trying to save people's life lives and has already had death threats and people threatening to kidnap her and put her on trial. What you make of this whole ethic of Trump people going after masks, going after governors who are trying to do the right thing?

Governor Cuomo: Joy, thank you for having me. I was initially shocked and disappointed and dismayed but that was eight months ago. They have been consistent. This was the President himself. Liberate Michigan, Liberate New York, organizing protests against governors who were trying to protect the people in their state. He's been in denial of the situation from day one. He's never been productive. The best thing he did was just abdicate responsibility and give it to the states. But I don't see anything different from this President. He has been incompetent and lied frankly about COVID from day one.

Joy Reid: He's also threatened you. He has a personal issue with you apparently. Maybe he's jealous because you knew what you were doing when it came to the virus and were honest with the public in New York. He said you won't get the vaccine. Not that he can actually do that - he won't be around. He won't be president at that point. What do you make of that threat to withhold a vaccine from the people of his own state?

Governor Cuomo: It's hard to get to the place where you don't take the President of the United States seriously. There's a disconnect. You say President of the United States, you think that it's a serious person. That's not this President. He is personally annoyed at New York as a state. He bet he was going to win New York. He lost New York. New Yorkers have been very disappointed with him. We're the home to the media, et cetera. He is personally piqued with me because I think frankly I told the American people the truth about COVID at a time when he wasn't and that bothered him. The threat is just that. It's a silly hollow threat. What bothers him is that I'm not going to allow New Yorkers to be bullied by him. There is a real problem on this vaccine. It's great that we're developing it. We have an issue that the American people don't trust it and they don't trust it because they don't trust him. Fifty percent of the people in this country said, the Kaiser poll, the Pew poll, the CNN poll, the NBC poll, 50 percent said they fear the President politicized the FDA's approval process. Several states, mine included, to try to build confidence are putting together state panels. Ours is headed by a Nobel laureate. So we can say we have reviewed the FDA approval process. It's a safe process. Please take the vaccine. That's to instill the confidence that the President lost by his politicizing the vaccination process and the FDA and CDC and the NIH. He finds that offensive. It also happens to be a fact. We have to build confidence in this vaccine.

Joy Reid: If let's say you were able to do that, and you came to the conclusion that the process, flawed or not, produced a vaccine that works, how would you actually roll that out to such a large state, such a large and diverse population. How would you actually implement that?

Governor Cuomo: Well, our review process, and there are about seven states that have a review process, that will basically be simultaneous with the FDA approval process. You won't have a state panel redo tests. You'll just have a state panel that reviews the protocol that the FDA used to make sure they actually went through the right steps. It will be simultaneous. It won't take any more time. You then have a roll out of the vaccine. That, Joy, is going to create a lot of issues that this administration hasn't even started to think about.

The production schedule is going to be much longer than they have suggested. They have the expectations that January, April, everybody is going to get a vaccine. You'd have to get the production schedule way up to make that possible. Just to give you an idea of how hard this is going to be: We've done 120 million COVID tests in this nation since this started. We have to do 330 million vaccinations. That's going to be a long, long process.

The federal government won't fund the states to do this. The CDC estimates that it will cost $6 billion dollars. The Trump administration hasn't funded anything. The state's already have a deficit and the social equity part of this is going to be a problem.

They want to use private health care companies to distribute the vaccine, big drug chains, hospitals, doctor's offices. How about the underserved communities? How about the Black and Brown and the poor communities? How about the fact that Blacks died at twice the rate of whites? Hispanics died at one-and-a-half times the rate of whites because they live in health care deserts and they had more underlying conditions. How do they get the vaccine without a massive effort?

All of those issues have not been discussed at all. I'm Chairman of the National Governor's Association. I've been talking to governor's all day long. None of them have been mentioned and that's going to be, frankly, the good news about the Biden administration coming in. They will have to tackle these issues.

Joy Reid: I have to ask you this, just as a fellow New Yorker. I can still remember breaking down and crying at work after 9/11 when the Boys Choir of Harlem went to Yankee Stadium and sang We Shall Overcome. Just every time I thought of that number of people who died, almost 3,000 people died, mainly in New York. It was hard to take. What do you make of the blasé attitude that so many Americans have about a quarter of a million people dead? We're talking about a 9/11 every day. Every day. Or two or three plane crashes every day. It's as if it doesn't matter to the President of the United States or to his party.

Governor Cuomo: Joy, there is no answer to it. Frankly, I've been living with it for 8 months. I understand the indignation. I understand the pain about the way he's handling this and the narcissism. You know what, I've been dealing with that from him for eight months. Frankly, he hasn't been any help and when we say, well he's not helping the transition - I don't think it's any great loss. I'll tell you the truth: Because he never contributed much to begin with.

Joe Biden is going to be talking to the governors on Thursday. We're arranging a call. The governors are the ones who have been handling this war, frankly. Joe Biden wants to engage with them right away and I think that's smart. I don't believe they can handle this vaccine roll out process. They've handled no operation.

They didn't handle the COVID testing operation, the PPE operation, the Defense Production Act - this federal administration failed at every turn. In some ways I say let's just move on. Let Joe Biden take the reins, let him start working with the governors and let's get it done because I don't believe Trump has the capacity to do it anyway.

Joy Reid: I think there are many people out there, Governor, who wish that Joe Biden could go ahead and get started right now because people are dying right now. I'm not sure we can wait until January 20. Governor Andrew Cuomo, thank you so much for taking some time tonight. I really appreciate you being here.