April 4, 2021 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
45:34
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| From the very beginning, I got an email from someone that knows the Cuomo family very well that said to me, you know, I'm sorry for your loss. | ||
| Something we never heard from the governor, by the way. | ||
| I'm sorry for your loss. | ||
| your fight is a valiant one, but watch your back. | ||
|
unidentified
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(upbeat music) | |
| I'm Dave Rubin, and joining me today is the senior meteorologist at Fox News, | ||
| author of the new book, "Make Your Own Sunshine," | ||
| inspiring stories of people who find light in dark times, and a woman who is not a big fan | ||
| of New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, Janice Dean, finally. | ||
| Welcome to The Rubin Report. | ||
| Oh my gosh, thank you for having me, my friend. | ||
| How do you like that little addition that I gave to your bio there? | ||
| Does that feel right to you? | ||
| You know, I gotta tell you, if you told me a year ago that I would be in the middle of a storm involving the governor of New York, I would have said, what are you drinking and where can I get some? | ||
| Well, you certainly are, and my audience knows I try to do these interviews really as freeform as possible, but I thought with this interview, I'm gonna do it a little more intentionally, because the book, which I've been reading over the last couple of days, it's so light and warm and decent, and it puts a smile on your face, but this last year, you really have stepped into a fight that so many of us are dealing with at so many different levels. | ||
| So for people that have no idea about what has gone on in your life in the past year, can you just lay it out? | ||
| How did this all start and when did you decide to really get into the public fight? | ||
| March 25th was the order which Governor Cuomo put his signature on that allowed COVID-positive patients into nursing homes, 9,000 of them. | ||
| And that was a fairly recent development. | ||
| The reason why I'm so interested in this topic is because we lost my husband's parents in separate elder care facilities. | ||
| In late March, we lost his dad. | ||
| And in April, about two weeks later, we lost his mother. | ||
| And obviously tragic. | ||
| I never planned to be someone who is a spokesperson on behalf of, you know, my husband's parents and thousands of others that we lost. | ||
| But I felt like I had to because when I saw the governor on television programs like his brothers on CNN, | ||
| joking around and not even approaching the nursing home issue, | ||
| that's when I decided to get a little bit angry because I felt like my husband's parents | ||
| and the situation that they were presented with unknowingly was not being represented fairly in the mainstream media. | ||
| And going back to his parents, we didn't even know there was a March 25th order. | ||
| And the plan was we were supposed to have both of them in an assisted living residence close to us on Long Island. | ||
| I feel kindred spirits with people who have to talk about what to do with their aging parents. | ||
| Their health was failing them. | ||
| They lived in a four-story walk-up in Brooklyn for 50 years. | ||
| We had many conversations about getting them out of there because they were going to have issues trying to go up and down the stairs. | ||
| So for many years the conversation was there, we wanted to get them to a different place, we offered to help them monetarily, and they just never wanted to take that. | ||
| They just said, we're just gonna stick it out, we love it here, and we'll deal with it as it comes. | ||
| As it happened, his dad got dementia. | ||
| His health was failing him. | ||
| His mom was very spry for a 75, 76-year-old, but she had back problems. | ||
| She had problems walking. | ||
| And so it got to the point where we had aides going to visit them. | ||
| That wasn't working out. | ||
| So we took his mom to look at assisted facilities. | ||
| And she loved the one close to us on Long Island. | ||
| She signed the paperwork. | ||
| His father was in bad health, so we had to get him in better shape | ||
| before he could join her in the assisted living residence. | ||
| And that's when COVID happened. | ||
| I mean, we hadn't even cleared out their apartment. | ||
| We were still paying the rent for them. | ||
| So it was very recent that we had put them in the in the elder care facilities. | ||
| They had never been separated in their lives and we were just hoping to get Mickey, his father, in better shape. | ||
| So COVID happened. | ||
| We were in quarantine in early March. | ||
| We weren't able to see them. | ||
| We were getting updates Um, from their separate elder care facilities, Sean was able to talk to his mom every day, um, because she was, you know, she was lucid. | ||
| His dad, obviously, it was tough because he had dementia. | ||
| We got a call on a Saturday morning in late March, not even knowing he was ill, and they said that Mickey was not feeling well. | ||
| He was running a fever. | ||
| And so, of course, we were concerned, and we were talking about what we were going to do, and three hours later, we get a call saying he was dead. | ||
| We had no idea he had died of COVID until we saw the death certificate. | ||
| And Sean had to deliver the news to his mother. | ||
| And to say that she was heartbroken is an understatement. | ||
| She got sick in her assisted living facility, was diagnosed with COVID when they brought her to the hospital, and she died in the hospital several days later. | ||
| The last thing she asked my husband to do was put her name on the Easter gifts for the kids. | ||
| So I never wanted to tell their story. | ||
| My husband is a very private person. | ||
| He's not on TV. | ||
| He's not a broadcaster. | ||
| He's a firefighter, 25 years in the department. | ||
| His dad was a firefighter as well. | ||
| But when I wasn't seeing the coverage, Of the nursing home issue and the fact that I was finding out that Cuomo wasn't counting those that died in the hospital, like my mother-in-law, that's when I decided it was time to tell my story, our story, so that at least somebody, anybody, would, you know, find out that this was actually something that was happening in New York. | ||
| Yeah, boy, all right, there's so many sort of offshoots where we go there. | ||
| First off, I have to say, I don't know if you know this, but I'm actually from Long Island as well, and I know a lot of Long Island firefighters, so I have no doubt that Sean is a great guy, because every single one of them that I know are great people. | ||
| Well, I guess first, just for a little more on the timeline, so how long was it that your folks didn't see each other, or your in-laws didn't see each other before you got that call about your father-in-law? | ||
| Well, you know, it started out that both Mickey and Dee were in the nursing home together, but his mother was in better shape. | ||
| So that's when she went to the assisted living residence. | ||
| And I would say they were probably apart for a few weeks. | ||
| So they were apart for a few weeks, but they knew that they would be together at some point at the assisted living residence. | ||
| So, you know, it wasn't very long that COVID happened. | ||
| Do you remember when Cuomo signed that piece of legislation or whatever it was, do you remember thinking, uh-oh, this could be a problem? | ||
| There were so many things happening at once, it was almost like impossible to make sense of any of it back then. | ||
| I know it's hard to remember just a year ago. | ||
| We didn't know about it, Dave. | ||
| I mean, honestly, I found out about it after they had died. | ||
| No one told us about it. | ||
| You know, I remember the red flag after the fact was that we got a call about Mickey, I would say about a week before he passed away, saying that they were going to move him to another floor because they were going to allow for more people to come into the residence. | ||
| But they didn't say infected patients, and we had no idea. | ||
| We only learned after they had died that there was a mandate in place to put COVID-positive patients. | ||
| So, you know, that's a big deal. | ||
| I think whose responsibility would that have been? | ||
| The nursing home? | ||
| The assisted living residents? | ||
| Someone should have told us. | ||
| But the other point of that is that we weren't able to see them. | ||
| You know, we were in quarantine. | ||
| Sean did see his mom before she got sick. | ||
| He dropped off flowers and a card after his dad had passed away, and he was able to see her six feet away with a mask on, but he wasn't able to go and hug her. | ||
| So there were all these things in place where we physically couldn't do anything. | ||
| You're almost jailed. | ||
| You couldn't move. | ||
| You couldn't find things out. | ||
| You couldn't go see them. | ||
| You couldn't bring them to you. | ||
| Obviously, if I had known about a March 25th order, we would have done things very differently. | ||
| We would have found a way to bring them here. | ||
| His sister-in-law would have taken one of them. | ||
| We would have done something. | ||
| Yeah, look, we all know hindsight is 20-20, but do you think in retrospect that the nursing homes themselves should have done different things, should have just protested the order? | ||
| I mean, do you think that some of them may have sort of known? | ||
| I know that we have more info now, so I know it's tough to do that kind of quarterbacking. | ||
| From what I know, and the people that I've talked with, work in nursing homes. | ||
| They did not want to take the COVID positive patients. | ||
| They felt they had no choice. | ||
| And if you read the order, they weren't allowed to even test them. | ||
| They were prohibited from testing them for COVID. | ||
| So, you know, that in itself is like, if you couldn't test them, then you didn't know if they even had the virus. | ||
| So, What could be the logic behind not being allowed to test people that you're bringing into the home? | ||
| Well, this is a bigger, broader subject that I think we need to investigate. | ||
| There are several investigations into the nursing home issue, which I am grateful for. | ||
| There's a federal one and there's an FBI one. | ||
| And what I want to know is, first of all, the origins of the March 25th order. | ||
| Where did that come from? | ||
| Because it's not based on science. | ||
| We all knew that putting infected patients into where our most vulnerable live is not scientific. | ||
| It was going to spread like wildfire, which is what our governor said as well, that it would be like wildfire through dry grass. | ||
| So I want to know where that order came from. | ||
| There are reports out there that the governor was not listening to science, | ||
| he was listening to hospital lobbyists who were saying to him, | ||
| we can't take these patients for very long. | ||
| They're not maybe paying customers. | ||
| We need to get them over to someplace else so that we can allow for more people to come in. | ||
| At the beginning of the pandemic, he had no idea. | ||
| We thought it was gonna be thousands upon thousands of people that were going to come into the hospitals | ||
| and take over the beds. | ||
| So at the beginning, I don't blame him for not really knowing what to do and sort of saying, | ||
| well, maybe we should put them the back end. | ||
| But it was in place for 46 days, and then it was reversed and scrubbed from the website. | ||
| So that should also tell you something. | ||
| I think there is corruption involved. | ||
| I think there is a criminal aspect to it. | ||
| I think it involves hospital lobbyists. | ||
| And the curious thing as well is that Cuomo put it in place for a blanket immunity for all of the nursing homes so that we could not sue them just a couple of days after that March 25th order was put into effect. | ||
| Have you talked to lawyers about how that could possibly be legal? | ||
| Because when I was doing a little research, that seems crazy, that the governor, in effect, is allowed to say, I'm going to make a policy, and regardless of the results of the policy, I'm going to make sure that the places that I'm forcing to do something cannot be sued. | ||
| I mean, I don't even see how that could be remotely legal. | ||
| Well, they're trying now in Albany to reverse that executive order so that the nursing homes can be held accountable. | ||
| Listen, it's not about suing... Do you want that to be held accountable? | ||
| I mean, is that... | ||
| I'll never get my in-laws back, right? | ||
| And the nursing homes, I felt like they were just doing what they could with the situation that they had. | ||
| They were wearing garbage bags. | ||
| They had no PPE. | ||
| That's another separate issue, is they didn't have the wherewithal to deal with all of these patients that were coming in. | ||
| And listen, they took good care of my husband's parents, you know, before COVID. | ||
| So, and we're not getting any answers from them either. | ||
| I think they're afraid. | ||
| I know that the nursing home people, the executives and the folks that work in the nursing homes, they are afraid to talk. | ||
| They don't want to lose their jobs. | ||
| And I do think that there needs to be more whistleblowers. | ||
| And that's why I think there needs to be a real investigation with subpoena power so people in the nursing home industry and the hospital industry, those that really want to tell the truth can come forward without So, when did you decide to really go public about this? | ||
| Because as you said, your husband's a private person, and although you're a public person, you know, it's his parents, they're your in-laws, it's not something that it would be that comfortable talking about, probably, because it's deeply personal, all that kind of stuff. | ||
| Well, when I started to see the information about the March 25th order, and then I started to see the information, the Daily Caller was the one that put out a report saying that Cuomo wasn't counting those that died in the hospital. | ||
| And I thought that that was bizarre. | ||
| Because it's like, if there's a car crash on the highway, And the person doesn't, unfortunately, tragically die on the highway, but they're transported to the hospital. | ||
| Does that mean that's a hospital death? | ||
| No, of course not. | ||
| It's still a car crash that happened on the highway. | ||
| So that, to me, was curious. | ||
| And I started seeing the governor going on all of these television programs and talking about, you know, how great his leadership was. | ||
| New York tough, you know, bending that curve. | ||
| He was selling a poster. | ||
| He was selling a poster showing that bend of the curve which was like a mountain and had all the COVID cases. | ||
| And I thought to myself, how gross that he's using COVID cases. | ||
| My husband's parents are on that curve that he supposedly crushed. | ||
| And then on the poster, there was all these like little pictures of the things that he loved about himself, like his dog and a giant Q-tip because of the, you know, the show that he was putting on with his brother, Chris Cuomo, on television. | ||
| That was the breaking point for me. | ||
| I was thinking about writing an op-ed about the situation because I thought I wanted to tell my family's story to bring awareness. | ||
| But when I saw Cuomo on with his brother, joking around, like, who's the favorite son and love gov and the big, giant Q-tip, I lost my mind. | ||
| I just thought to myself, What kind of universe am I living in with thousands upon thousands of dead? | ||
| The body bags are piling up outside of nursing homes. | ||
| We weren't able to have wakes or funerals. | ||
| Luckily, we knew someone who owned a funeral home, who went to school with my sister-in-law, that helped us bury them. | ||
| That's when I decided to talk to my friend Tucker Carlson. | ||
| I was telling him what was going on with the nursing homes and my concerns with what was happening in New York. | ||
| And he told me, he said, you have an invitation to come on my show if you ever want to tell a story. | ||
| And so it was that day after I saw the Cuomo Brothers Comedy Hour that I went on Tucker's show. | ||
| That, I mean, okay, so everyone remembers that interview with Chris and Governor Cuomo and, you know, the laughing and all that. | ||
| So I'm gonna jump forward for just a second. | ||
| But when you saw Chris, because I'm sure you saw it a few weeks ago, say that he can no longer talk about his brother on the show because it's personal. | ||
| I mean, that's like basically vomit-inducing stuff. | ||
| Like, we can give him the worst sort of fluff interviews. | ||
| We can both sit there with our fake tans and laugh hysterically and have everyone write fluff pieces about the sexy Cuomo brothers or whatever it is that they're doing on HuffPo. | ||
| And then, and now, oh, now he's in a little hot water. | ||
| Wouldn't be journalistic if I talked about him now. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Can you imagine if that happened on Fox News? | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Right? | ||
| So I don't even think Chris Cuomo should be on television right now. | ||
| It's not ethical. | ||
| I mean, Cuomo is a huge story, right? | ||
| I mean, the guy could be impeached. | ||
| There are motions going forward that he could be impeached. | ||
| We have Me Too involved now with eight women. | ||
| He doesn't even do like a news segment He just continues to do his show ignoring the huge elephant in the room. | ||
| So yeah, it's quite rich for him to say that he can no longer interview his brother. | ||
|
unidentified
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Blows me. | |
| So then the story blows up and now you sort of became the center of this thing for a couple of weeks. | ||
| It was like, oh, the nursing home thing, people couldn't believe it. | ||
| You're right in the center of it. | ||
| Since I spend so much time on this show talking about cancel culture and dealing with the mob and everything else, can you just talk a little bit about The love and I'm guessing some of the hate that you've received in the midst of all this? | ||
| From the very beginning, I got an email from someone that knows the Cuomo family very well that said to me, you know, I'm sorry for your loss. | ||
| Something we never heard from the governor, by the way. | ||
| I'm sorry for your loss. | ||
| Your fight is a valiant one, but watch your back. | ||
| I knew that early on, that I was in for the fight. | ||
| And I had heard that he was vindictive. | ||
| I also heard that he was a bully. | ||
| You know, there were many times that I would do interviews, and they would always ask the governor's office to make a comment. | ||
| And twice, the governor's office said, well, you know, can you ask Jan—first of all, they never said, we're really sorry for your loss. | ||
| It was always, can you ask Janice the exact day her in-laws died and what nursing homes they were at? | ||
| So twice the governor's office asked that. | ||
| And then there was one time there was a Daily Mail article that was put out and they asked for a comment and the quote was, she's not a reliable source on anything except the weather. | ||
| So, you know. | ||
| And I just thought to myself, well, you know, that's not very creative. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But certainly on social media in the early days of this, I was, you know, I was definitely attacked. | ||
| He was the most powerful guy. | ||
| I mean, they were talking about him being a president. | ||
| He was, you know, the fact that he was writing a book in the middle of a pandemic and then again being on television celebrating himself, winning an Emmy Award, and he had all these celebrities that were appearing with him at his press conferences. | ||
| I actually got into a little bit of a Twitter spat with Ben Stiller because he was doing a birthday celebration with Whoopi Goldberg, by the way. | ||
| They raised money for Cuomo. | ||
| How much was it per plate for a virtual event? | ||
| It was like 20 grand a plate for a virtual event in the midst of all of this? | ||
| Right. | ||
| It was at least $1,000 for the bare minimum. | ||
| So I just thought, listen, I'm going to let Ben Stiller know what happened to the nursing homes in New York. | ||
| He's a New Yorker. | ||
| And he came back at me pretty quickly and was just like, well, I like the governor. | ||
| It's too bad that you don't like him. | ||
| And, you know, it was just so dismissive. | ||
| And it didn't take long for Ben Stiller to realize what my family had been through. | ||
| And to his credit, which is more than most people do, he apologized and he deleted his tweet. | ||
| And I actually said, I'm okay with that. | ||
| He didn't know my family story. | ||
| Now he does. | ||
| Maybe he's more educated on the situation. | ||
| And that's my whole thing, is if one person can be educated by me telling my story about what's happening in New York, then all of that is worthwhile. | ||
| So what do you make of sort of where Cuomo is at right now? | ||
| Because, you know, now he's got, as you said, there's at least eight women accusing him of some level of sexual impropriety. | ||
| I mean, I've said this a million times before, it's like, okay, an accusation is one thing, but of course you need proof, you need corroboration, but that's not the rules that his team have been playing by for quite some time. | ||
| Those weren't the rules with Brett Kavanaugh or a litany of other people on the right. | ||
| So this is sort of his making. | ||
| Just where do you sense he's at right now between that and of course all of this? | ||
| Well, he's not going to leave. | ||
| He's already said that. | ||
| And there is, you know, I think it's kind of a sham. | ||
| They say that they've started the proceedings for impeachment in New York, but it's going to take not weeks, but months. | ||
| And then they're done in June. | ||
| So I don't think that's going to happen. | ||
| I am relying on the law. | ||
| You know, the investigations that are going on right now, the federal investigation, the FBI investigation. | ||
| There was also a DOJ investigation, you know, under Barr that I hope continues under Biden. | ||
| The Me Too stuff, at first I was a little bit shocked by it, but now that I think of the person that we're talking about, you know, sexual harassment is not about sex, it's about power. | ||
| And so his whole MO is about, I'm the most powerful guy and I can do whatever I want. | ||
| So now it doesn't surprise me that he treated women badly, and he's treated other people badly, you know, his co-workers. | ||
| Ron Kim, who is a friend of mine, he is a Democrat, he had an uncle that died in a nursing home. | ||
| He's been very vocal about the nursing home situation. | ||
| I am grateful for him because he is raising awareness on his side of the aisle of the situation. | ||
| And he also came out with his experience with the governor, calling him on a weekend, yelling at him and saying, you know, I'm gonna, I'm going to ruin you, essentially, if you if you go against me. | ||
| So I just I hope and pray, Dave, that the law helps us out here and that they get to the bottom. | ||
| And he you know, the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. | ||
| I've always said the only thing I want right now is a bipartisan investigation with subpoena power that puts the governor on the stand. | ||
| So to speak, his health commissioner, Howard Zucker, and the people that surrounded him, that helped cover up the numbers. | ||
| You know, that's another big story, is the fact that it was the AG, the Democratic AG here in New York, put out her own report saying that they purposely undercounted the nursing home deaths. | ||
| Those that died in the hospital were never counted. | ||
| I mean, listen, as a New Yorker, I know how out of whack the whole state government is in New York and half the people that were in it 10 years ago are in jail right now. | ||
| It's all very bizarre in New York. | ||
| Has this changed any of your political beliefs as you've been in this fight? | ||
| You know, I've always said I'm not a political person. | ||
| I never have been. | ||
| I'm originally from Canada. | ||
| You know, I was born in Canada. | ||
| I think there's a government up there, right? | ||
| You got a government? | ||
| That guy with the fancy socks? | ||
| Yes, the fancy socks guy. | ||
| You know, my mom is more political than I am. | ||
| You should meet her sometime. | ||
| But, you know, I'm the meteorologist on Fox. | ||
| I've always said the only red and blue that I see on the map are areas of low pressure and high pressure. | ||
| And I stick with that. | ||
| I like the fact that nobody knows who I voted for. | ||
| When I got the job at Fox, it was never a prerequisite to tell them who I voted for. | ||
| So I will remain that way. | ||
| But I will tell you, I've often said to people, what if I worked for a different channel and the governor that I was going after was a Republican? | ||
| What do you think would happen and how much coverage do you think my story would get? | ||
| Yeah, I get what you're dropping. | ||
| I get what you're dropping. | ||
| All right, well, before we move on from this, because I do wanna talk about the book, of course, I mean, is there anything else? | ||
| Well, actually, wait, I do have one other thing for sure, which is that we actually delayed this interview taping a few days because you just got the second COVID shot and sounds like that thing really knocked you out, huh? | ||
| Oh, listen, I am pro-vaccine. | ||
| I have MS. | ||
| I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis 16 years ago, so I'm a compromised person. | ||
| And so I believe in vaccinations, and I was always wanting to get one. | ||
| And so my neurologist wrote me a note, and I was in line with the other comorbidities. | ||
| Um, the first shot was fine. | ||
| You know, I had the pain in the arm. | ||
| And then the second shot, my husband also had, had the, the vaccinations as well. | ||
| And, and he didn't do too badly. | ||
| You know, he, the, for maybe 12 to 18 hours, he was fluish and, you know, he had the aches and pains, but man, I, you know, for, I would say for 48 hours, it was like, I had COVID and I had the worst headache. | ||
| The headache was so bad that I was nauseous the whole time. | ||
| I couldn't see my children. | ||
| I couldn't look at anything. | ||
| I couldn't see the TV. | ||
| I was literally in a dark room. | ||
| So, listen, I'm grateful I've come out of it on the other side doing well. | ||
| And I encourage everyone to get the vaccine. | ||
| I believe in vaccinations, and I'm grateful for the scientists that came up with them. | ||
| But yes, I will warn those, the second vaccination can be a doozy. | ||
| Well, that is the perfect segue, because you're saying all of that while you're smiling, and that really is the point of the book. | ||
| And excellent product placement behind you, by the way. | ||
| Thank you! | ||
| Really, really spot on. | ||
| You too! | ||
| You know, I've got people. | ||
| But one of the things that I really loved about the book is when I do my show every day, I try to do it with a little bit of a smile on my face. | ||
| I try to do it so that people don't feel depressed after about the news. | ||
| I'm not trying to just bludgeon everybody so that they're stuck watching, which is pretty much what CNN and a lot of the other places are doing. | ||
| So I guess first, how did you kind of come to that place where telling people some of the good stuff actually mattered to you? | ||
| I've been telling good news stories for many years now. | ||
| I do a feature on Fox News Radio called The Dean's List, and it's a 60-second feel-good story about a person doing kind things for someone else, or doing something that brings sunshine into someone's day. | ||
| So I've been doing that for a very long time, and I always thought to myself, I would love to make this into a book where I could dive into these stories, each make them a chapter. | ||
| So this was that book. | ||
| I started working on it before the pandemic, but I wrote most of it and did a lot of the interviews during the pandemic. | ||
| And more than ever, even though we were socially distancing from each other, I was finding these stories all over the place of people doing wonderful things for other people, We were adapting as human beings. | ||
| You saw people doing car parades for birthdays. | ||
| I got one of those. | ||
| My husband did that for me for my 50th birthday. | ||
| And the other part of this was, I wanted to put this book out in the universe for other people to read, to show them that there are good people doing kind things for others all over the place. | ||
| It's what It's what unites us. | ||
| I really think that kindness begets kindness, and those that do good things for others, it gets passed along. | ||
| But what I didn't realize, Dave, is that I was the one that was going to get the most out of writing this book, because I was talking to these wonderful people during the darkest time for our family. | ||
| And getting light and goodness from all of these stories and interviews that I was doing. | ||
| And every day, I'd take my oldest son Matthew for a walk, and that would be our topic of conversation. | ||
| He'd be like, Mom, who'd you talk to today? | ||
| Tell me the story! | ||
| And I would tell him the story of the napkin notes dad who wrote napkin notes for his daughter Emma when she was just a little girl. | ||
| And how he continued doing that even though he was diagnosed with cancer and thought he might not live to see her graduate, so he wanted to make sure he wrote napkin notes for hundreds of school days in case they lost him. | ||
| He's still here, and I talk to him, and I talk to Emma, and so those are the people that brightened my day when we were going through such dark times. | ||
| So that's the ironic part of this, is I got so much out of writing this book, more so than I ever thought I would. | ||
| Yeah, so I wanna dive into a couple of the stories, because there's some really great stuff in there. | ||
| But I'm curious, when you were pitching the book and bringing it to your publishers and everything, is selling a book that's so positive, is that tough for those guys? | ||
| Because if you just look at a bookstore, you know, front area, what's in the window, I mean, it's all basically depressing stuff. | ||
| You know, the world's coming to an end, the pandemic's gonna kill you, Trump tried to kill you, somebody else is coming to get you, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. | ||
| It's a tough sell. | ||
| I'm not gonna lie. | ||
| And what I didn't tell you is, before the Dean's List happened, I did a good news story on Fox News, a show called Happening Now with my friend Jane Skinner. | ||
| And she was the one that came up with the Dean's List because she thought, you know, News is so terrible. | ||
| We need something bright and cheery, and you do the weather. | ||
| A lot of times it's mostly sunny, but sometimes it's stormy. | ||
| But why don't we work on a good news story that we can use as a kicker? | ||
| We call it a kicker in the business. | ||
| And so we started doing that on television, but the news kind of took over, and the Dean's List got killed more often than not. | ||
| But I was, you know, she was always a cheerleader of it. | ||
| So the moral of the story is, you know what, sometimes the good news doesn't sell. | ||
| But I think now more than ever, we need these stories, Dave. | ||
| You know, I really think that we need to hear these hopeful, good stories about trying to be a better human being. | ||
| And so that's my message. | ||
| And I will tell you, Then I got a lot of people saying to me, OK, your book is coming out. | ||
| When are you going to stop with the Cuomo stuff? | ||
| Because we need the break. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| Be like, hi, I'm the sunny girl who brought you this most make your own sunshine stories. | ||
| And I said, you know what? | ||
| I'm both. | ||
| Why can't I be both? | ||
| Because I am both. | ||
| I am still the half the glasses, half full. | ||
| I'm still the mostly sunny girl. | ||
| I'm also an advocate who wants to shine sunlight as a disinfectant. | ||
| So, you know, I think the advocacy can also be making your own sunshine. | ||
| So, you know, trying to balance both of those things is, I can be both at the same time. | ||
| But I'm not going to lie, sometimes the good news stories are a tough sell. | ||
| Excellent use of the metaphor with sunshine as the best disinfectant. | ||
| That fully works with the book. | ||
| Give me like two stories that really particularly moved you. | ||
| I can pick one or two, but if you've got some that are right off the top of your head. | ||
| Well, it's funny because everyone tells me a different story that they love, and that's what I love about it, is that, you know, someone will say, well, I loved, you know, the Carrie Blasey story. | ||
| So I'll tell you that one. | ||
| That was the first one, one of the first interviews that I did during the pandemic, and Carrie and I became very close friends afterwards. | ||
| Simple story. | ||
| Her daughter was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. | ||
| Forgive me, type two diabetes, what's the more serious one? | ||
| Forgive me, I don't wanna screw this up, so I'm gonna get my book right now. | ||
| This is impressive, an author actually going to the source, I like it. | ||
| Well, here's the thing. | ||
| Wait, I've got it, let's see who can find it first. | ||
| I don't wanna screw it up because there's a really, okay, there's two types of diabetes, and the one that she has is the really serious one, type one. | ||
| Type one, okay. | ||
| And that's why it's important, because Carrie is a big advocate for type 1 diabetes. | ||
| Not to say that type 2 is not a serious illness as well, but type 1 is when you're really, really constantly concerned about your child. | ||
| Every day they take her measurements, her glucose levels. | ||
| She's got a special portal on her body that has to be You know, her insulin has to be just right, the right level. | ||
| So having said that, Carrie put a sign on her door saying that she had a person who | ||
| was compromised living in her house. | ||
| And as a person who lives with MS, I can totally identify with that. | ||
| At the beginning of the pandemic, we didn't know how bad it was. | ||
| She didn't want the virus anywhere near her daughter, her compromised daughter. | ||
| So she put a sign on the door that said, if you have any deliveries, leave the package here. | ||
| Don't ring my doorbell. | ||
| I'm not opening up the door. | ||
| Just leave it here and I will sanitize the package and bring it in. | ||
| So a wonderful FedEx driver sees the sign and says, oh, goes back to his FedEx truck. | ||
| They see this, by the way, on a camera. | ||
| He doesn't know that he's being filmed. | ||
| They have one of those Nest cameras on their doorstep. | ||
| He goes back to the FedEx truck, grabs some wipes, and wipes the package. | ||
| He smudges the print on the package and thinks to himself, oh, I don't want them to I wonder why the package is smudged. | ||
| So he writes a note saying, I saw your note on the door. | ||
| I sanitized the package. | ||
| Have a great day. | ||
| He didn't expect anything from that. | ||
| She saw the video of this kind FedEx driver and thought to herself, wow, he went the extra mile, took the extra step to do this for my family. | ||
| And her husband was the one who said, you You should put that out on social media. | ||
| Maybe he'll get a raise or FedEx will do something nice for this driver. | ||
| And she put it on social media. | ||
| It went viral. | ||
| FedEx certainly, you know, saw that. | ||
| Justin Bradshaw, by the way, is the FedEx driver. | ||
| And as it turns out, Justin has a little girl that when she was born was a preemie and they had to take care of her and they were worried about her. | ||
| So his backstory sort of reflects upon, you know, why he was doing what he was doing. | ||
| So that's the story of Carrie Blasey and her daughter, Emma, and the wonderful FedEx driver, Justin, who did a kind thing that deserves all of our attention. | ||
| And that's why I started the book with that chapter. | ||
| Yeah, and it's interesting because it's like, sort of at face value, what he did wasn't that extraordinary, except I think what people have realized in this past year is that it is these little things that are becoming sort of extraordinary as we socially distance and we don't hug people anymore and you wear a mask and sunglasses and a hat and then people don't even see your face, that these little things, was that like a theme for you, that little things have somehow become bigger? | ||
| Yes, there are definitely the little things in there like buying someone's coffee in line and then doing it for the next person. | ||
| And someone buying a coffee for you can change someone's day! | ||
| It's that simple. | ||
| But I also talked about bigger movements. | ||
| For instance, my husband's friend Ray. | ||
| Well, he was my friend too. | ||
| Ray Pfeiffer, FDNY, he was there after the Twin Towers fell. | ||
| Yeah, this is the one that I wanted to ask you about. | ||
| Digging for his friends for months in toxic, a toxic stew that we now know was so bad that it caused 9-11 related illnesses. | ||
| Ray got very sick with cancer. | ||
| And he was just one of those guys that would walk into a room and you just would gravitate, we call him Ray of Light. | ||
| We called him the mayor because he would walk into a room and he would gravitate towards Ray. | ||
| He would do anything for you, you know, shirt off his back kind of guy. | ||
| So, he got sick with 9-11 related cancer because he dug for months trying to find his fellow firefighters that, you know, their families wanted to at least find some remains. | ||
| So he spent the rest of his days after he was diagnosed making sure that other first responders would never have to worry about health care if they were diagnosed like him with 9-11 related illness. | ||
| So Ray screamed as loud as he could. | ||
| He went to Capitol Hill. | ||
| He banged on Congress doors. | ||
| Chuck Schumer, you know, like, listen, I'm dying of cancer. | ||
| I want to make sure my brothers and sisters Have health care so that their families don't have to worry because it's, you know, their bills are high. | ||
| And so, you know, he's no longer with us. | ||
| But I call he was making sunshine for his his friends and his fellow firefighters and his fellow first responders like my husband. | ||
| I know that if my husband ever got sick, Ray would take care of him and he would take care of our families. | ||
| So that was an important story for me to tell. | ||
| And you know what? | ||
| When I think about my fight right now with the governor, I think of Ray Pfeiffer, because he did everything he could to raise awareness for good. | ||
| You know, it's interesting because when I was reading the story about Ray, I was in New York also during 9-11. | ||
| As I said, I'm from Long Island, but I lived in Manhattan on the Upper East during 9-11. | ||
| And I remember about two weeks after 9-11 when people finally started even just leaving their houses again, because we were all glued to the television and also the smell out there and everything else. | ||
| I remember I was on a basketball court. | ||
| I went to play basketball by Gracie Mansion. | ||
| I was like, I've got to get out of the house. | ||
| I just like, I can't stay in my house anymore. | ||
| And I was playing basketball with just a couple of random guys and somebody elbowed one guy and they got into each other's face and they were about to hit each other. | ||
| Like you could, I've seen this a million times. | ||
| It was about to happen. | ||
| And they both started crying at the exact same time. | ||
| Both started crying. | ||
| Like I'm getting chills up my spine as I'm telling you this. | ||
| And so I was thinking about that when I was reading this, because it's like those little moments of humanity, that is the important stuff. | ||
| And it's sort of like we could use a little more of that, I hate to say it, but that sort of post 9-11, like, yeah, we all kind of are in this together, whether you like it or not. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| I hope we can get there. | ||
| I don't know that we can right now. | ||
| I feel like people are angry, and they're rightfully angry, Dave. | ||
| I mean, we've been trapped in our homes. | ||
| It depends on where you live, obviously. | ||
| But here in New York, I mean, people still can't see their loved ones in nursing homes. | ||
| People have lost their businesses and their livelihoods. | ||
| I mean, this is tough. | ||
| I hope we can get to a point where we can, you know, smile at each other again. | ||
| But having said that, I do see those pieces of humanity, you know, what we went through with our family. | ||
| I mean, from the firefighter down the street that brought us a meal, you know, just dropped it on our doorstep, to all of the prayer cards and prayers that we got from other people, our church, obviously, you know. | ||
| Open their arms. | ||
| There were parishes all over New York that said that they were going to honor my husband's family. | ||
| So it's there. | ||
| And like I say in the book, sometimes you just have to really look for it. | ||
| Because if you're not open to it and you don't open your heart to it, then it might not come to you. | ||
| So I think that maybe that's what we have to do is we have to look for it. | ||
| Yeah, so I don't want you to give away the entire book in this interview, but can you give me one more that maybe was like sort of unexpected or maybe went in a direction that you didn't think when you sat down with someone, something like that? | ||
| You know, let's see. | ||
| That's a good one. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm going to think about that for a moment. | |
| You can go to the source if you need it. | ||
| I know, let me take a look. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, there's so many of them. | |
| Well, actually, while you're looking, I'll mention something else, so you can look for a second, but one of the things that I really liked, and I will hold the book up for a second, is that I like that you put the photos in here too, because you don't see that in books that much anymore. | ||
| I feel like photos always used to be in books, and you don't really see it anymore, but when you just see, these are just... | ||
| Regular people, young girl, you know, the 9-11, you know, just guys on the street, people with glamour shots. | ||
| You're like, oh, it reminds you that, you know, we're all just human. | ||
| That's all it is. | ||
| It's true. | ||
| I'm glad you said that because I really fought hard to make sure that their pictures were in the book. | ||
| You know how you read a book and you have a visual of what you think the person looks like, but then it's always kind of cool to actually see what they really look like? | ||
| So I'm going to talk about Seth Stewart, the fellow that goes around on Valentine's Day and gives roses to people. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| The reason I pick him is because, you know, a few years ago on February 14th, Valentine's Day, him and his buddies thought to themselves, you know, Valentine's Day is important for people that have, you know, a girlfriend or boyfriend or significant other. | ||
| You know, they know that they're going to get something. | ||
| But what about Valentine's Day for people who aren't expecting a delivery at the door? | ||
| So what he wanted to do was give roses to people that don't have their significant other or a loved one in their life. | ||
| So he prompted people via social media to nominate people to get a rose. | ||
| And so he would go to these, you know, these residences where there were widows or people | ||
| who were having a really tough time. | ||
| And so this became sort of, you know, a movement, I guess. | ||
| And he was, every year it was getting bigger and bigger and bigger. | ||
| And so when I talked to him, he was such a wonderful guy. | ||
| I love chatting with him. | ||
| And he just had this great sense of humor. | ||
| And, you know, I asked him, I'm like, so you have a girlfriend, how does she feel about | ||
| this? | ||
| give roses to everybody and. | ||
| And he said, well, you know, she thinks it's great. | ||
| I said, well, of course she does, because you're doing something important. | ||
| And his point was, I'm not giving roses to like, you know, women who I want to date. | ||
| I'm giving roses to people who aren't expecting something, that they've had some kind of loss in their life, | ||
| or they have lost somebody, and maybe they're not having a good day, | ||
| and just a delivery of a rose can change their outlook. | ||
| And he sent me notes that people wrote afterwards about how important that one gesture was. | ||
| And then when I talked to Seth, he told me something about himself. | ||
| He too was diagnosed with diabetes, and he talked about his struggle, | ||
| and how at one point he got to the point where he didn't wanna live anymore. | ||
| And he told me this story, and it just, you know, it made my heart break. | ||
| But the point was is that he's so glad that he wanted to stay alive and do this for other people, | ||
| and how it's important that when we go through challenges, we realize that coming out of those challenges, | ||
| we can be better people. | ||
| We can do things to better ourselves, be better human beings. | ||
| And so that just struck me, because I never thought about him telling me | ||
| this backstory to his life, but it was important because it kind of gives you an inside | ||
| to where this guy is coming from, where his heart is, and you know, his background | ||
| about how he really truly wants to do good things for other people to change their day. | ||
| Well, Janice, I think your story is basically proof that you're making your own sunshine. | ||
| In a year that was pretty bizarre. | ||
| You are welcome back anytime, especially if you want to talk about Cuomo. | ||
| And don't get me started on this Newsome guy. | ||
| I'm on my own little adventure with him. | ||
| So we're definitely in this fight together. | ||
| So I thank you. | ||
| I hope I can see you in Long Island sometime. | ||
| Or you're always welcome to come out here to LA. | ||
| Megan knows my husband makes a pretty good chicken parm. | ||
| Can I tell you that I was so jealous when she told me about her evening. | ||
| There is no way she is going back to L.A. | ||
| without me in tow so that we can get together. | ||
| You guys are always welcome to our home. | ||
| And I thank you. | ||
| This was a wonderful interview. | ||
| And, you know, thank you for your support and your kindness. | ||
| And you, my friend, are also spreading sunshine. | ||
| There you go. | ||
| All right, thanks a lot. |
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