What CNN, MSNBC, and their party, the Democrats, won’t discuss is their genuflection last year before Andrew Cuomo’s press conferences. He’s a smart talker, no doubt, and they gobbled it up. Cuomo even won Emmy Awards for his performances, perhaps because Michael Avenatti was indisposed. What these news organizations didn’t do was investigate the medical disaster that was actually happening in New York state nursing homes while they were drooling at Cuomo’s press conferences. CNN went even further. They allowed the governor’s brother, Chris, who has a prime-time show on the network, to act as a political fanboy, turning his program into a nightly advertisement for his brother. Letitia James’s report reveals that Chris later worked as a clandestine political adviser to his brother while still on-air at CNN. At any other network, Chris might want to get his résumé ready. At CNN, who knows?
Here’s something else that should bother all journalists: if 11 people came forward to AG Letitia James to testify about Gov. Cuomo’s harassment, plus at least two more since the report was issued, isn’t it highly likely that journalists in the tight-knit political world of Albany already knew about the problem before it surfaced publicly? Isn’t it likely that they kept silent because the governor was from their favored party and because they feared retaliation if they spoke out? Put differently, when journalists fail to do their job and are already marked down as political partisans, perhaps the two are connected.
Here’s another question we should ponder: would Albany Democrats have pushed Cuomo out of office if his successor would have been a Republican? That was the problem faced by Virginia Democrats after they quickly condemned Gov. Ralph Northam for a blackface photograph, only to find his lieutenant governor, another Democrat, also facing serious #MeToo problems. That meant Northam’s removal could pass the office to a Republican. Upon that unhappy discovery, Democrats began saying that they’d been too hasty in seeking to remove Northam. He was able to wait it out.
Cuomo took Northam’s survival strategy as a model. But the differences were too stark. The evidence against Northam was much weaker and older than the evidence against Cuomo. Equally important, the consequences for his political party would have been much worse. Once Virginia’s black political leaders, all Democrats, decided Northam’s blackface offense was tolerable, under the (current political) circumstances, he could survive. No such luck for Cuomo.
Related: Valerie Jarrett Claims Cuomo Worried Her in 2014. She’s Praised Him For Years On Twitter.