Audio & Rush Transcript: Governor Cuomo is a Guest on MSNBC's Morning Joe

Earlier today, Governor Cuomo was a guest on MSNBC's Morning Joe to discuss New York State's response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

AUDIO is available here.

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

Mika Brzezinski: President Trump with those comments on Friday about withholding a coronavirus vaccine from New York State. it comes after Governor Cuomo said he planned to have a panel of experts review a vaccine rather than taking the word of the Trump Administration. And Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York joins us now. I guess at some point you would even have legal action if necessary, to get what you need, Governor?

Governor Cuomo: Oh, Mika, that's just Trump talking. He's going to be gone. I think frankly we spend too much time trying to delve into the bizarre world of Trump. He doesn't like that I criticize him. He doesn't like that I stand up to him. He's a typical bully, and it bothers him. It's not me who doubts the FDA, it's 50 percent of the American people. Kaiser poll, Pew poll, ABC poll, CNN poll - they all say 50 percent of the people don't trust the vaccine, they believe he politicized the process. New York and 6 other states have put together an independent review panel to build that trust, so when the FDA says here's our process, we have an independent panel, with a Nobel laureate, that can say it was a fair process. If people don't trust the vaccine they're not going to take the vaccine, it's all for naught.

Mika Brzezinski: What do you think about the fact that -- I mean, the first thing a member of Biden's coronavirus task force said to us on the show just moments ago is that the first thing they'll do is the president will enact the Defense Production Act and he will make sure that testing and PPE and everything that is needed to be nationalized and administered uniformly and quickly is going to happen. It just boggles the mind as to why that hasn't happened so far. Does it push the envelope of actual malpractice?

Governor Cuomo: The whole four years has been malpractice. This is a person who never said he understood government or wanted to govern. There is no governance. It was all public relations. My fear is he's making every mistake he made when COVID first started. This is just a redux. We're going to do vaccines because Pfizer and Moderna have a vaccine. Yeah, that's like COVID testing if you'll remember back then. "We're going to do COVID testing. I direct the states to do COVID testing". And then how are the states supposed to do testing?

On vaccine, Mika, they have no idea what they're talking about with vaccinations. We have to do 330 million. This nation, doing everything we did over the past eight months only did 120 million COVID tests. 120 million COVID tests are a lot easier than 330 million vaccines. And he's giving the states no money and no resources. And he thinks he's going to have drugstores deliver it and hospitals deliver it. I'll tell you what that's going to do. That's going to leave out the Black and Brown community, which the death rate among blacks is twice what it was among whites. So, we're headed for another operational disaster with his plan.

Mika Brzezinski: Jonathan Lemire, jump in.

Jonathan Lemire: Governor, as you know, New York City schools are teetering on closing. The city set a measure of 3 percent positivity rate, if the city passes that they will close. They're open today, but city officials have said they could shut down at any time. I wanted to ask you two things about that. First, you expressed over the weekend your hope that schools would stay open and that city officials, meaning New York the city Mayor bill de Blasio, would find a way to keep most of the schools open even if perhaps that 3 percent threshold is breached.

So, my two questions for you are this. One, why not step in here as Governor? You have not been shy in the past, wading into city matters. Why not step in to keep schools open, to come up with the different plan? But secondly, why also have you not ordered indoor dining to cease in New York City? That was a 2 percent threshold when that was supposed to happen. The city has passed that, but yet indoor dining remains open.

Governor Cuomo: Yeah, Jonathan, I am shy, I just camouflage it well. It's not fair to say that Mayor de Blasio set 3 percent. What we did with schools in New York, we have 700 school districts. It was very important to us that the parents and teachers be part of the dialogue and have confidence. New York City which is one of the school districts, obviously one of the largest, had a whole conversation. We had webinars, we had dialogues, and the parents and the teaches felt comfortable at 3 percent and we set 3 percent through that dialogue and collective. That's where the 3 percent came from.

It also came at a much earlier time when we were at about 1 percent and 3 percent sounded outrageously high. So at 3 percent the teachers, the parents, expect and agreed that the schools would close. What I'm saying is we've learned a lot since then and schools are actually the safe place. The infection rate in the schools is much lower than the rest of the city and the rest of the community. Why not leave the children in the schools rather than have them around run around the streets where the infection rate is five times as high?

So if the schools hit the 3 percent what I'm suggesting to the parents and the teachers and the Mayor is let's take a second calculus which is the infection rate in the school. We know New York city is at 3 percent. Let's add an element of the infection rate in the school and if the school is below a certain threshold, let that school reopen. But the parents and the teachers have to agree. There is no fiat here.

If the parents don't agree they don't send their child, school doesn't matter. If the teachers don't agree they don't come into the school, you don't have a classroom. So that's the discussion that's going on right now. I think it's a good discussion. On indoor dining, they're at 25 percent, they were supposed to go to 50 percent, I stopped that and I just closed them at 10:00 p.m. and if the numbers continue to go up, we're going to clamp down even more.

Mika Brzezinski: Jonathan Lemire, I just know you have a follow-up. Jump in.

Jonathan Lemire: Governor, I just wanted to go back again to the schools. I know you said you wanted to put it together as part of a process here. But as you note, school, transmission of schools is very low. The parents have wanted the children to remain in the schools. How much role does the teachers union play in this and at what point if the schools can't come to an agreement on their own, would you as governor just unilaterally step in?

Governor Cuomo: I've never stepped in unilaterally on a school district because, Jonathan, it doesn't matter. It's not something that you can do by declaration. If the parents are uncomfortable and they don't send the school children then you accomplish nothing. If the teachers don't show up, and they're capable of not showing up, then you accomplish nothing. So we've made sure that it was a collective dialogue and what I'm trying to say to the parents and to the teachers now is, I know we said 3 percent. I know that was the rule. But we did that months ago and we've learned more since then and we're more sophisticated and we have more testing.

Now we know that schools are actually safer than the surrounding community and we should rethink that 3 percent. But you have to get them there, Jonathan. You know, through this whole process, government art form today is not "I'm declaring this, I'm declaring that." It's you build a consensus because this is all voluntary. People have to agree and you have to bring them along. I think there's a very good case to say add a new element for the infection rate in this school and then we'll have two elements. We have that now under a State program where we do override the locality if we have a high infection rate in a neighborhood.

We call it micro-clusters hot spots and we'll come in at 4 percent and we close everything down but we let the schools test out of that. So if you hit 4 percent you're in a red zone, but the school does its own test and if the school is below a certain number we allow the school to open. I think that makes sense. But the parents and the teachers have to come because they are much more reluctant than you are suggesting. It's not that everybody gets it. You have to educate them.

Mika Brzezinski: All right, let's go to Reverend Al Sharpton. Reverend Al?

Reverend Al Sharpton: Governor, let's go back when the President accused you of dealing with question of distribution of the vaccine politically and you said that you wanted to make sure experts have analyzed the vaccine. Last night, you and I talked on my show about how many of the communities of color, Blacks in particular, were skeptical of any vaccine because of a history with the Tuskegee experiment and others. How are you going to recommend to the Biden administration, because you're the only national figure that has raised this - that even with the best vaccine there is reason for some people to have concerns. Then, how do we distribute it to the communities that have been most impacted that don't have the pharmacies and don't have the hospital facilities that you've raised? Everyone is acting like there's an equal playing field in this country when it comes to health services.

Governor Cuomo: Amen, as I would say in my office. Reverend, you're exactly right. This vaccination process has not been thought through at all. It's just what Trump did with the testing and the PPE and the masks. He has no idea how to govern and his government is, frankly, incompetent. They're now saying we're going to do vaccines and distribution. You start off with a very high level of skepticism among the general population, that's 50 percent that don't trust the vaccine. That we'll do in a panel.

Once you get past that, you have a scale that you haven't even imagined. I've only done 12 million COVID tests in New York to date and I've done more tests than any other state. I now have to do 20 million vaccines? They're talking about distributing it through Walgreens and doctor's offices. That's nice, but there are no Walgreens and national drug chains in communities of color and poorer communities.

67 percent of the communities of color are health care deserts and you have the distrust: Tuskegee, et cetera. You need a massive public education campaign that's going to build trust in this vaccine. The panel is part of it. You need Black people standing up saying, "Trust it. I'm going to take it." I said in my State, i'll be the first person to take the vaccine.

You then need a distribution network where you get into those public housing projects and you get into those low-income communities. It is a massive undertaking. The CDC said it would cost about $6.2 billion. Right now, the Trump administration has allocated $140 million and said to the states, figure it out. Jesus couldn't figure this out with loaves and fishes. We're broke. We haven't gotten any stimulus and now we have a $6 billion vaccine distribution plan that no one has an idea about. It would be the largest government operation undertaken since World War II. It would go back to the old Polio distribution days.

The mechanism, the public trust, the reaching out to the communities, using the faith-based communities to actually build trust within their community - it's a massive, expensive undertaking that nobody has even contemplating right now.

Mika Brzezinski: Well, we'll be heading into it but not with Trump. Governor Andrew Cuomo, thank you very much for being on the show.