Photo Illustration by Kelly Caminero / The Daily Beast / Getty
Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was repeatedly pressured by CNN’s top brass to appear on his brother’s primetime television show during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, a new book claims.
Melissa DeRosa, the onetime secretary to ex-New York Gov., says in her upcoming book, What’s Left Unsaid, that CNN was eager to use the governor’s appearance to boost the network’s ratings. In an excerpt obtained by The Daily Beast, DeRosa claims that when she pushed back on Chris Cuomo’s producer, telling them the governor wouldn’t be available to appear on the program one evening, then-CNN president Jeff Zucker and chief marketing officer Allison Gollust immediately rang up Andrew Cuomo and guilt-tripped him into changing his mind.
In DeRosa’s telling, this occurred at the height of the pandemic when the Cuomo brothers’ “love-a-thon” segments had become a staple of CNN’s weeknight programming, with the network riding the wave of high ratings despite the obvious conflict of interest issues stemming from a CNN journalist interviewing his politician brother.