Almost two years ago, Samantha Bee used her role as one of the very few ladies in late-night television to mock Joe Biden’s video apologizing for inappropriately touching women in a way her male counterparts never could. Now, with another prominent Democrat under fire for even creepier behavior, the Full Frontal host went all-in Wednesday night.
“The U.S. still has a long way to go toward making a real recovery from the pandemic, but we’re entering a new phase. The fog is clearing and we can finally start scrutinizing the behavior of our leaders, including the ones we used to like,” the host began. “Looks like Andrew Cuomo is the biggest dirtbag New Yorkers have elected since… pretty much every previous dirtbag we’ve elected. Guess we have a type!”
Bee described the multiple sexual-harassment allegations against the New York governor as “disturbing but not surprising,” and after letting news reports outline those details, she added, “Cuomo seems like the kind of guy who thinks it can’t be sexual harassment if he didn’t use the word ‘toots.’”
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“Back in 2020 we were so desperate for a leader who wouldn’t tell us to go bleach ourselves, we turned our governor into a hero,” Bee explained, exposing media figures like Ellen DeGeneres who called themselves “Cuomosexuals.”
Now that we know for sure that Cuomo is not a “hero” she said, “If we want to demand the best from our leaders, regardless of whether they’re Democrats or Republicans, we can’t treat them like we treat our food journals, we have to be honest about them, like we do in our dream journals.”
She then accused Cuomo of using the COVID-19 pandemic to “raise his profile” while at the same time making “devastating mistakes” like the one that likely helped increase nursing home deaths.
“Fortunately, New York Attorney General Letitia James is preparing to oversee an investigation into the sexual-harassment claims against Andrew Cuomo,” Bee said later. “And that’s good! Because politicians aren’t infallible. If we treat them like they are, we will be disappointed. We need all of our officials to work for us and part of that means holding them accountable.”
“Just because Governor Cuomo stepped into a leadership void during the pandemic doesn’t mean he gets a pass on his consistently shitty behavior,” she concluded.
For more, listen to Samantha Bee on The Last Laugh podcast.
