Entertainment
Fox News Under Fire After Hiring Notorious Democrat; Ex-Host Explodes
Fox News has hired Andrew Cuomo’s former top aide Melissa DeRosa, handing the Democrat’s longtime lieutenant a contributor role and a spot on a new podcast.
DeRosa will appear in the Oct. 1 premiere of “The Girls,” a weekly show featuring a rotating lineup of female co-hosts, Fox News Media announced Monday.
The hire drew a blistering response from former Fox News weathercaster Janice Dean, whose mother-in-law and father-in-law died of COVID-19 in 2020 after living in New York long-term care facilities. Their deaths turned Dean into one of Cuomo’s fiercest critics as she demanded answers about his administration’s handling of nursing homes during the pandemic.
“Melissa DeRosa helped smear the women who came forward about Andrew Cuomo’s harassment, and played a hand in undercounting nursing home deaths during COVID. Also tried to silence my advocacy.”
DeRosa served as secretary to the New York governor, becoming the first woman to hold the powerful position. She resigned in August 2021 as sexual harassment allegations engulfed Cuomo’s administration.
Months earlier, she had acknowledged during a private call with Democratic state lawmakers that the administration withheld nursing home death data amid concerns about a possible investigation by President Donald Trump’s Justice Department.
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The February 2021 admission fueled a scandal over New York’s accounting of the pandemic’s toll on vulnerable residents. The state’s nursing home tally excluded residents who died after being transferred to hospitals, leaving thousands of deaths out of that count.
DeRosa later said the administration had put lawmakers’ request on hold while prioritizing the federal inquiry.
A New York State Assembly investigation released in November 2021 concluded that Cuomo had not been fully transparent about nursing home resident deaths. The investigation also found that he sexually harassed women and used state resources to produce and promote his pandemic memoir.
Now DeRosa is joining a Fox News podcast built around conversations spanning politics, family life, careers and pop culture.
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Rachel Campos-Duffy, Harris Faulkner and Kat Timpf will also appear in the premiere. New episodes will arrive Thursdays on platforms including YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
The launch also marks a return to the spotlight for former ESPN host Sam Ponder, who is resurfacing with Fox News Media after her 2024 dismissal from the sports network. The former “Sunday NFL Countdown” host will sit alongside DeRosa and the Fox personalities in the first episode of “The Girls.”
