Audio & Rush Transcript: Governor Cuomo is a Guest on NBC's 'The Tonight Show' Starring Jimmy Fallon

Yesterday evening, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo was a guest on NBC's The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon.

AUDIO of the Governor's interview is available here.

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

Jimmy Fallon: Governor Andrew Cuomo has shown such amazing leadership in helping guide the great State of New York, and all of us New Yorkers, through such a tough time. We're going to talk about where things stand now as reopening continues. Here's Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Welcome, Governor. Thank you so much for being here. This is our first show back in the studio.

Governor Cuomo: It's a pleasure. Thank you for having me and welcome back. New York is really open now that you're doing the show.

Jimmy Fallon: How are you? How's the family? How are the girls?

Governor Cuomo: I'll tell you the family is good. We went through hell and back, as you know in New York, but we went from having, Jimmy, the worst infection rate in the country. We now have the best infection rate. So we really turned the corner, New Yorkers stepped up. They really did the right thing: They did the social distancing, they stayed at home and we tamed the beast here in New York.

So we just have to cross our fingers and hope that it stays there because you see the infections now all across the country and it's going crazy. We're just worried that the infection is going to come from other states now back to New York which would be a real tragedy.

Jimmy Fallon: Why do you think the virus is going up in some states and going down in New York?

Governor Cuomo: Look, we had two different approaches from the beginning, right. You had the President of the United States basically denying that the virus existed. I believe he played politics with it. You had these other states rush to reopen like there was no problem. But there was a problem. There was virus and you can't deal with the virus politically. You had to be smart, you had to get it under control. You had to do what we did, you had to close down. People had to take precautions. Wearing the mask. We were the first state to say you had to wear a mask.

You had to get the virus down and we did that and it wasn't easy, but look, long term it turned out better. We've been open now for about two months as a state and we have the infection rate way down low. And it was never going to work, what the President said. It was never going to work to deny it, hope that it was magically going to disappear or have states reopening without following science whatsoever.

Jimmy Fallon: I saw your briefing this morning. Before that I missed your briefings. What have you done with your free time that you're not briefing?

Governor Cuomo: I slept. I've been sleeping a lot. I still do the briefings when I have something to say, something that's new, and we do it a couple of times a week. But look, that was a horrendous period and I wanted to do it every day just because I wanted to be there with people every day. This was emotional more than anything else. It was frightening, it was isolating. People didn't know what was going on so I just wanted to say to the people of the state, look, I'm going to be there every morning. You want to know where we are? You want to know the update? I'm going to be there. And if you don't want to know, that's fine too, but if you have any questions I'm going to be there. I know you're going through heck every day.

I'm going to do it with you because you're right. We did something that's going to go down in the history books and it was the people of New York. Jimmy, I had nothing to do with it except explain the situation to the people of the state and ask them to do the right thing and step up and they did. They did. 19 million people, you know, these are New Yorkers. They can be a difficult bunch, right, but they really, they listen to their better angels, they really did the right thing and I'm so proud to be a New Yorker to tell you the truth.

Jimmy Fallon: Yeah, me too. Also you've been getting a lot of praise that you're the first governor to really enact police reform. What can you say about that?

Governor Cuomo: Well, you heard the outrage after the George Floyd murder and look, in many ways I'm surprised it took so long. You know, you have 30 cases that went before George Floyd. You can go back to Rodney King in Los Angeles. It was 30 years ago. We had Amadou Diallo, Abner Louima in New York 20 years ago and they're all basically the same. Eric Garner in New York City, six years ago, died of chokehold on Staten Island. So I think people at one point just said enough is enough. They want a different type of policing. They want a different relationship with the police and I think it's a good thing, Jimmy. I think, look, if you don't have trust and respect between the police and the community, you have nothing. The relationship has to work and if it's not working for one party the relationship isn't working. And what the community is saying is it's not working for us.

So great, let's reset the relationship and what do you want from the police department and what do you not want? What do you want fixed? And let's have that conversation as a nation, we're starting it in this state. And I said every police department in every city has to sit down at the table with the other side in a collaborative and redesign a police department that works for everyone and change the procedures you need to change because the police have to do their job also and they need trust and respect to do their job. But I think it's a great transformational moment where we get to reset and change the relationship.

Jimmy Fallon: You're dealing with so much. You've been releasing these posters, I want to say, that if you don't mind me showing, like here's one you released just basically showing what we're dealing with, it's beautifully drawn, and you released a new one today and I heard that you had a little help designing this as well.

Governor Cuomo: Yeah, that one, you know, that, for me these posters just allow a different form of expression, you know, and they're basically a relief valve for me, just to design it, make it visual, sketch it, make it graphic, what am I trying to say, what am I feeling. And that was the mountain that we went up. Remember every day in those briefings the number of cases kept going up and up and up and up and you didn't know when it was going to stop, and we were trying to bend the curve, flatten the curve, and we had to do that by our behavior, and then we came down the other side and the cases were declining so slowly, and we finally got to the other end. And so many people helped, and so much happened along the way, there was so much fear and pain and trauma. But on the other hand, there was such goodness. The people of New York did the right thing. We had 30,000 people volunteer to come in from outside New York to volunteer in our hospitals. Think about that. 30,000 people. I mean, there's a lot of love in this country, and there's a lot of goodness.

Jimmy Fallon: It's the best. Where can people get these posters, by the way? Are they for sale?

Governor Cuomo: You can go to NY.gov and get the posters.

Jimmy Fallon: I have to ask for a friend, they want to know, I won't say her name, she wants to know what phase of dating are you currently in?

Governor Cuomo: Zero. I'm at phase zero on dating. There's no duration on phase zero. There is no automatic time that you go to phase one. You could stay at phase zero for months, by the way. I think New York City will be fully reopened before I get out of phase zero on dating.

Jimmy Fallon: I thank you so much for your leadership, you were there for us when we needed you, you still are there. Thank you so much to Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Governor Cuomo: Thank you. Good to have you back, Jimmy, thank you so much.