In mid-February, The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah was one of the first late-night hosts to really give it to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo over his cover-up of COVID nursing home deaths, comparing his aversion to reality to former President Donald Trump’s. And now, Noah is going hard in the paint on Cuomo’s series of sexual-harassment allegations. Thus far, two former aides to Cuomo have accused him of making lewd comments and unwanted advances (allegations Cuomo has denied), and this week, a third woman came forward to The New York Times accusing him of aggressively pawing her and trying to kiss her at a wedding.
After thanking Cuomo for his wedding toast about her friends, Anna Ruch, now 33, told the Times that Cuomo put his hand on her bare lower back. “When she removed his hand with her own, Ms. Ruch recalled, the governor remarked that she seemed ‘aggressive’ and placed his hands on her cheeks. He asked if he could kiss her, loudly enough for a friend standing nearby to hear. Ms. Ruch was bewildered by the entreaty, she said, and pulled away as the governor drew closer,” reported the Times. Ruch says she was “confused and shocked and embarrassed” by the unwanted advance.
“Jesus, man! What are you doing? I mean, on the one hand, asking women for consent before you kiss them is what you’re supposed to do, but the other part of consent is waiting for them to answer! You don’t just grab them on the face like a bear yanking on a beehive,” said Noah.
To make matters worse, the deeply creepy interaction was captured in a photo by Ruch’s friend, showing the much-older Cuomo (now 63) ogling and manhandling a terrified-looking Ruch as though she were a piece of meat.
“I mean, look at this photo,” commented Noah. “How can you not tell that you’re making this person uncomfortable? If you’re doing something to someone that turns them into the [cringe] emoji, you’re doing something wrong. And what’s so brazen about it is that he’s doing it right in front of everybody, in the middle of a wedding.”
Also, the incident happened in September 2019—so this isn’t some event in the distant past but one after the #MeToo movement had taken hold, a movement Cuomo claimed to at least verbally support in the past while doing things like objecting to Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination.
“If you’re a public official doing this kind of thing after the #MeToo movement either you just can’t help yourself or you shouldn’t be in office anyway,” Noah remarked. “So in light of these allegations, Cuomo is now facing even more calls to resign. Although if these allegations prove anything, Cuomo doesn’t go away when you want him to.”
