Dan Calabrese: Turns Out Cuomo Was Just Another Disposable Puppet for the Anti-Trumpers
Boy. Andrew Cuomo went from superhero COVID fighter to sexual harassment monster fast.
Of course, there are narratives and then there is reality.
Some of us told you ten months ago that Cuomo had ordered nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients and that the decision had been a disaster. Some of us knew all along, even while Cuomo was receiving plaudits from the press and even a freaking Emmy for his COVID news conferences, that there was nothing to admire about how he was handling this.
But there’s always been a narrative to Andrew Cuomo: Tough. No nonsense. Decisive. Competent. Everything Donald Trump wanted to appear to be but wasn’t.
That was the media’s man in Albany, the hard-as-rocks governor who would do whatever it took to get the job done. And you’d better like it, because he was better than you and everyone knew it.
That was the Andrew Cuomo narrative and the media pushed it without the slightest hint of embarrassment.
But the media do have a breaking point in their cheerleading for Democrats, and it comes when they can no longer maintain their own credibility if they keep up the act. Once we learned from a top Cuomo aide that the governor’s staff had falsified the numbers of nursing home deaths, the Cuomo-as-hero narrative jumped the shark for the media.
And boy did it jump.
Suddenly we heard from former Cuomo aide Lindsey Boylan alleging Cuomo sexually harassed her, including a kiss on the lips to which she did not consent. Only days later, former Cuomo health policy adviser Charlotte Bennett came forward to say Cuomo had asked her lurid questions about her sex life in an obvious attempt to get in her pants.
Suddenly even Democrats in Albany are demanding that Cuomo resign and calling him a monster. This comes as others suddenly come forward with tales of Cuomo’s frequent bullying behavior against everyone from his own staff to legislators to the press.
Why are we hearing all this now? These things have been open secrets in Albany for a long time. Suddenly everyone is eager to talk publicly about it.
There’s only one explanation that makes any sense: Cuomo was useful to the political class and the media as the anti-Trump.
Everyone knew what he was like, and everyone knew his record was not nearly as impressive as we were led to believe. But his condemnations of Trump were biting and memorable, and it was useful to hold him up as some sort of genius on COVID countermeasures when there was a man in the White House that everyone was looking to discredit.
Two things went wrong for Cuomo. First, his foil went away. The get-Trump effort was too successful. Second, his own people let slip that they’d been lying about COVID deaths for months – and that it was all about how Team Trump would play it if the truth came out.
Suddenly there is no more incentive to protect, let alone lionize, Andrew Cuomo. He’s gone from being the establishment’s poster boy to being the establishment’s problem.
It’s hard to make a hero out of a governor who herded sick people into nursing homes, lied about the deadly consequences, and all the while was acting like a total cad toward the women around him.
Thanks for your former usefulness to us, Andrew. You are now disposable.
Away with the monster!
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