Don’t look now, but the rats are beginning to abandon the Bad Ship Cuomo.

How else to describe yesterday’s breaking news that a top aide to New York’s Emmy Award-winning governor privately apologized to Democrat lawmakers for having hidden the state’s true data on nursing home deaths from federal investigators?

As the New York Post reports, “The stunning admission of a coverup was made by secretary to the governor Melissa DeRosa during a video conference call with state Democratic leaders in which she said the Cuomo administration had rebuffed a legislative request for the tally in August because ‘right around the same time, [then-President Donald Trump] turns this into a giant political football,’ according to an audio recording of the two-hour-plus meeting. ‘He starts tweeting that we killed everyone in nursing homes,’ DeRosa said. ‘He starts going after [New Jersey Governor Phil] Murphy, starts going after [California Governor Gavin] Newsom, starts going after [Michigan Governor] Gretchen Whitmer.’”

It’s not surprising that they’d try to blame the former president. He’s a handy whipping boy for a corrupt mainstream media that has continually given Cuomo the benefit of the doubt. This time, though, Trump’s watchful eye so paralyzed the Cuomo administration that they couldn’t think clearly. Or honestly. “In addition to attacking Cuomo’s fellow Democratic governors, DeRosa said, Trump ‘directs the Department of Justice to do an investigation into us. And basically, we froze,’ she told the lawmakers on the call.”

It’ll be interesting to see how this “freezing” defense holds up in a court of law.

“So we do apologize,” DeRosa said. “I do understand the position that you were put in. I know that it is not fair. It was not our intention to put you in that political position with the Republicans.”

Ahh. Instead of apologizing to the more than 13,000 families who lost loved ones due to Cuomo’s catastrophic policy of returning COVID-positive patients to nursing homes and thereby allowing the virus to spread like wildfire, DeRosa apologized to her Democrat colleagues for, well, having inconvenienced them politically. They weren’t buying it, and neither is anyone else.

As the Post continues, “In addition to stonewalling lawmakers on the total number of nursing home residents killed by COVID-19, Cuomo’s administration refused requests from the news media — including The Post — and fought a Freedom of Information lawsuit filed by the Empire Center on Public Policy.”

New York Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, for one, has seen enough. In a statement released yesterday night, she called this “a massive corruption and coverup scandal at the highest level of New York State Government,” and demanded that Cuomo and his senior team be prosecuted immediately at the state and federal level.

Meanwhile, some 1,300 miles south of Albany, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was showing the nation what real leadership looks like. Where Cuomo has utterly failed his state’s elderly citizens, DeSantis has protected the Sunshine State’s seniors.

Speaking in Port Charlotte yesterday, DeSantis reacted harshly to speculation that the Biden administration might hit his state with travel restrictions — ostensibly to protect against spread of a coronavirus mutation, but more likely to draw attention away from his party’s $350 billion blue-state bailout and wealth-redistribution scheme.

“I think it would be unconstitutional, it would be unwise, and it would be unjust,” said DeSantis. “Restricting the right of Americans to travel freely throughout our country while allowing illegal aliens to pour across the southern border unmolested would be a ridiculous but very damaging farce. … We will not back down, and if anyone tries to harm Floridians or target us, we will respond very swiftly.”

Remind us again: Which governor wrote the book on leadership during a pandemic?