Andrew Cuomo, the would-be paterfamilias of New York who dished about his daughters while creeping on his staffers during his Emmy-winning daily coronavirus briefings, is back, eight months after resigning in disgrace, utterly unrepentant and as determined as ever to have the last word.
Having stepped down with $18 million in campaign funds still at his disposal, he’s running TV ads promoting himself and his decade as governor. He’s also giving speeches, with one Thursday as the guest of an infamously virulent homophobe. Before an audience including a former lawmaker expelled from the New York City Council for sexual harassment and ethics violations, the former governor decried a “cancel culture” he called “a social death penalty” and “modern day stoning.”
In addition to the $18 million in campaign funds, Cuomo left office with the $5.1 million he was paid for his since-pulped quickie book on the “Leadership Lessons” he supposedly provided while “leading” New York through a pandemic that killed nearly 70,000 New Yorkers. The death toll included thousands of nursing home deaths that resulted from his policies while he did his damndest to keep that information from coming out.
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That was a death penalty, and not a “social” one.
The infamous bully, who hasn’t ruled out running again to try and claim redemption from voters, on Thursday cried out, “Stand up to the bullies!”
Andrew Cuomo makes Melania Trump seem like a credible spokesperson for an anti-bullying campaign.
“I’ve never seen a situation where they used government resources to investigate a political opponent,” whined Cuomo, who as the state AG (which, the joke goes, really stands for aspiring governor) investigated Gov. Eliot Spitzer. As governor, Cuomo asked for the investigation that led to his resignation but which he’d hoped would buy him time as the political walls closed in.
The endlessly cynical man who founded the Women’s Equality Party offered no apology to any of the women who say he pressed them for sex. He keeps falsely claiming he’s been “vindicated” in his case of He Said, She Said, She Said, She Said, She Said, She Said, She Said, She Said, She Said, She Said, She Said, She Said because no district attorney pressed criminal charges against him following his resignation.
The Queens-born son of privilege is famously obsessed with his ratings. Sound familiar? Maybe that’s because his lawyer is also working for the Trump Organization’s former CFO who’s refused to flip on the boss after being charged with tax fraud, in a case the former president claims is still another “witch hunt.” In Thursday’s speech, Cuomo mocked politicians who track their press coverage and social media mentions as he went on and on, in a reminder of his exhausting way of talking opponents and listeners into submission, and his clear love of the uninterrupted sound of his own voice.
“Politicians today, they watch that Twitter. They watch that Twitter like they watch their heartbeat, like they watch their blood pressure,” he said, shifting into a singsong, mocking voice: “‘Oh, they’re tweeting against me, they’re tweeting against me.’ Even the press is afraid of the cancel culture.” Speaking about his brother Chris, he added: “I know because my family paid the price for them being afraid of cancel culture.”
“You should not be in politics if you are not willing to take the heat,” said Andrew—who resigned last year to try and escape the heat of an impeachment trial that would have dug not only into the sexual harassment and worse findings from Attorney General Letitia James (the one Cuomo asked for), but also his coronavirus response. And all that’s not to mention a federal investigation of the nursing home numbers he provided to the Trump administration.
Cuomo blamed cowardly politicians for turning New York City into what he described as a veritable hellscape, asking of the state’s (other) politicians: “How many more people have to be shot before they act?”
“When people die, it’s the No. 1 issue,” Cuomo said, about crime. It takes chutzpah for the governor for the last 10 years to say things are terrible because of the politicians.
It takes nerve for him to say that about “when people die” given the deaths on his watch from a virus that he kept trying to wish away, long after the threat was clear (again, sound familiar?). He just droned on about how “Worse than the virus right now is the fear pandemic“ and then, after finally acknowledging the danger, needlessly created deadly delays to bigfoot New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Cuomo’s speech Thursday was more gaslighting from a man who, like former President Donald Trump, knows how quickly things can turn around if you shamelessly push through. He also knows how short attention spans are, given how he went from the peak of Cuomosexuality and an Emmy to resigning in disgrace in about a year.
With one poll showing Cuomo in spitting distance of Kathy Hochul, the former lieutenant governor who claimed the big seat when he gave it up and is now running for a term of her own, he has made a point of not ruling out a run. But there’s little time left to gather petitions to get on the Democratic ballot and no evident place for him in the party, which is what he means by a “cancel culture.” A general election campaign on a third party line could well end up with New York electing a new Republican statewide for the first time since his father’s stunning defeat at the hands of George Pataki in 1994.
That’s not a path that a man who’s determined to always have the last word wants to go down, so I expect he’ll just keep talking.
They say people get the government they deserve—“you have to demand better,” Cuomo declared at one point. Amen to that.
