Well, if you were wondering how awkward it was going to be for CNN’s Chris Cuomo to cover the news on the day New York’s attorney general r...
Well, if you were wondering how awkward it was going to be for CNN’s Chris Cuomo to cover the news on the day New York’s attorney general reported that his brother, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, had sexually harassed several women, now you know.
As it happens, he completely avoided the whole story.
The younger Cuomo, in fact, has been banned by CNN from covering his brother’s scandal. What’s more, the report released by Attorney General Letitia James on Tuesday implicated Chris for helping craft Gov. Cuomo’s response to the allegations against him.
So it’s actually rather extraordinary that Cuomo was on air at all, peddling pandemic hysteria as he conspicuously skirted mention of his brother’s explosive scandal.
What was awkward was Cuomo’s fellow host, Don Lemon, diving right into the story after a friendly handoff from his buddy Chris.
On Tuesday, James announced that a nearly five-month investigation had found that Gov. Cuomo sexually harassed a number of current and former staffers as well as a handful of other women, including a state trooper.
Top Democrats have called for his resignation, including President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and the New York Assembly is taking the report into account as part of an inquiry into whether there are grounds for impeachment.
Gov. Cuomo is refusing to step down.
Yet over at CNN, his little brother is ignoring the elephant in the room to spout off about the coronavirus.
“I’m Chris Cuomo, welcome to ‘Prime Time,’” the anchor said at the start of his show, the New York Post reported. “We’re focused on COVID here, especially until we get the delta variant under control and for now, as you know, it’s getting worse.”
His silence on his brother’s fall from grace was deafening. Instead, Chris tore into another governor, Florida’s Ron DeSantis, who has been fiercely resisting New York-style mask mandates, vaccine passports and the like.
After mentioning Simone Biles’ return to competition for one final Olympic event, in which she secured bronze, and chatting with Vermont’s health commissioner on the state’s vaccination program, Chris discussed the Capitol incursion during his handoff to Lemon.
Lemon, who has the good fortune of not being related to the disgraced New York governor, dove right into his scandal, although the fact that he’d just had a friendly chat with the governor’s brother was still rather glaring.
Chris has come under fire on more than one occasion over his professional relationship with his big brother, with whom he conducted cringeworthy and at times irreverent interviews at the start of the pandemic.
When allegations of sexual harassment emerged against Gov. Cuomo, it was revealed that Chris helped him write a statement in response.
To be fair, Chris publicly apologized for the role he played in the scandal and stopped covering his brother. Fraternal loyalty is hardly the worst offense Chris could have committed, especially if he believes his brother to be innocent.
However, his non-coverage of the older Cuomo’s scandal hardly nullifies CNN’s blatant conflict of interest.
After all, for those unfortunate people who rely on “Cuomo Prime Time” for their evening news digest, it would have appeared that there was nothing worthy of note taking place in the upper echelons of New York’s government on Tuesday.
CNN did consider giving Chris a temporary leave of absence to advise his brother, as The New York Times reported this week. (The anchor is scheduled, rather conveniently, to take a vacation next week.)
He apparently could not be spared on Tuesday evening, as he was sorely needed to fan the flames of fear and hysteria surrounding the coronavirus pandemic — despite the inconvenient fact that COVID-19 deaths are at a 16-month low.
If CNN had even the tiniest shred of integrity, it would have taken Chris off the air long ago.
But he and his brother have been two of the most prominent figures driving the left’s apocalyptic coronavirus narrative. CNN clearly cares more about keeping this narrative afloat than about holding itself accountable.
This is why Democrats are calling for Gov. Cuomo to resign over sexual harassment allegations and not the significantly more egregious nursing home scandal, for which he has received virtually no criticism from his own side.
Do not let the outrage over Gov. Cuomo’s alleged sexual misconduct fool you. Leftists are perfectly happy to sacrifice him on the altar of the #MeToo movement if it means they can keep their coronavirus narrative alive and New York’s thousands of nursing home deaths swept under the rug.
CNN and little brother Chris, meanwhile, are prepared to sacrifice whatever integrity they may have had left to run cover for the governor — and continue to peddle pandemic panic.
No comments