Shameless, delusional Cuomo brothers continue to play the role of victims By Maureen Callahan
Cockroaches.
Keith Richards.
The Cuomo brothers.
Yes, Andrew and Chris, those heroes-to-zeroes, have officially earned their place among the rare life forms sure to survive Armageddon.
Nothing can exterminate these two from public life, because nothing Andrew or Chris has ever done is their fault.
Actually, scratch that. The problem, you see (and can’t you just hear Andrew’s pedantic, patronizing voice saying this, lowering down into that slow, conspiratorial whisper?) is ev-er-y-bo-dy else.
And really, the Cuomo brothers believe this. Two delusional, power-hungry, disloyal narcissists, determined to bully weary voters and viewers into submission. It’s all so very dignified and statesman-like.
On Thursday morning, just seven months shy of resigning in disgrace, Andrew gave a lengthy speech explaining what’s gone wrong with the modern Democratic party.
Answer: They pushed him out of it.
This speech was classic Andrew Cuomo, lamenting the thoughtlessness with which his political carcass was burned on the progressive pyre — and yet! He is magnanimous enough to maybe consider serving as governor again.
Few things are as cringe-making as watching Andrew Cuomo play hard-to-get.
And wouldn’t you know, all the problems New York faces — Andrew can really relate. Number one, he said, is crime — like, say, the terrible crime committed against him.
“Extremists dictate radical positions,” he said.
Translation: Woketivists and feminists got me fired.
“There’s an old expression: The politician who does nothing does nothing wrong.” Self-explanatory.
On misguided bail reform: “How many more people have to be assaulted before [politicians] react?”
Talk about living in an echo chamber. As governor, Andrew was credibly accused of sexually harassing 11 women and fostering a toxic, bullying workplace. This went on for years before an attorney general — a female attorney general — decided to react.
But let Andrew Cuomo bring morality. ethics and a measured approach back to Albany, won’t you?
Taking advice from his equally disgraced brother Chris, Andrew then blamed his resignation on cancel culture.
“It’s a social death penalty,” he lamented. “No one’s immune — politicians definitely. I know, because my family paid the price.”
Speaking of prices, his brother Chris has just raised his ransom demand at CNN from $65 million to $125 million.
Chris, you see, regarded himself as a very serious journalist at CNN. Now he rides around in muscle cars out East, literally spinning his wheels for the foreseeable future.
As one source told Page Six in February: “Chris is telling people in the Hamptons he was wrongly fired, humiliated, his career has been ruined, and he wants Megyn Kelly money.”
Such a man of the people. Oh and a champion for women. Remember, as he once so seriously intoned on-air: he takes these issues, #MeToo and such, very seriously.
Chris, don’t forget, tried to smear at least one of his brother’s accusers while at CNN. As a working on-air journalist, he secretly advised his governor brother off-air, at the height of Andrew’s scandals. Yet this wasn’t enough to terminate Chris. Nor were any of the multiple journalistic ethics Chris breached during the height of COVID.
Nope, wouldn’t you know: it was a sexual harassment claim brought against Chris last December that did him in. If CNN wasn’t willing to fire Chris Cuomo before, then that sexual harassment complaint must have been believable.
Just as everyone knew Andrew was a bully, everyone knew Chris was too. A few months before Chris was let go, Page Six reported that one of his female producers had “begged to leave his show,” with more than one source saying that “she felt threatened.”
Her request was granted.
Now, in a new claim filed against CNN on Wednesday, Chris Cuomo whines that he “has had his journalistic integrity unjustifiably smeared.”
Cuomo says that his former BFFs Jeff Zucker and Don Lemon are just as ethically compromised, that the whole news organization is rotten and problematic — no argument there — that Zucker and his girlfriend, CNN exec Allison Gollust, were also secretly advising Andrew, so why should he take the fall?
Much like Alec Baldwin’s recently filed claim for arbitration, Chris Cuomo’s contains some doozies: Chris never “[took] part in — or even became aware of — any efforts to tarnish the credibility of Gov. Cuomo’s accusers” is but one example.
And as with Baldwin’s filing, there is a startling lack of self-awareness here. When your complaint essentially reads, “Everybody hates Chris,” you have to wonder: Just why does everybody hate Chris?
A sampling from cited news reports:
“Chris Cuomo a ‘Despised Figure’ Within CNN at This Point as Fallout Continues Over His Firing: Insider.”
“[S]ome CNN employees found Cuomo’s combative, hot-blooded conduct . . . ‘rude and even threatening.’”
“[Chris] Caused ‘So Many Headaches’ for CNN, Staffers Were ‘Very Unhappy.’ ”
“Chris was a toxic and distracting presence.”
And my favorite, from a CNN insider: “I don’t know anyone who likes him.”
One female state assemblywoman on the then-embattled Gov. Andrew Cuomo: “A lot of people just don’t like him.”
We get it. The preening, the machismo, the pedantry, the hypocrisy, the bully-cum-hapless-victim-act, the sheer arrogance and contempt, the inability to ever once express a shred of remorse or humility — the Cuomo brothers, for all their rivalry, are quite the same. And now they face an identical fate, probably the worst either could imagine: to be irrelevant, unwanted, not missed, once-big men made small by, of all people, women.
Hey — at least they’ll always have each other. I mean, Fredo would never turn against his own brother . . . right?
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