President Donald Trump and actress Cynthia Nixon are both political foes of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D.), but the similarities appear to end there.
Nevertheless, both of them had scathing remarks for Cuomo Wednesday after he declared, in a dig at Trump's famous campaign slogan, that "we're not going to make America great again. It was never that great."
Trump took to his favorite medium, Twitter, quoting Cuomo's comment before writing, "Can you believe this is the Governor of the Highest Taxed State in the U.S., Andrew Cuomo, having a total meltdown!"
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1029911186949767168
Cuomo fired back at Trump, writing on Twitter, "What you say would be 'great again' would not be great at all...We will not go back to discrimination, segregation, sexism, isolationism, racism or the KKK. Like NY's motto says: Excelsior -- Ever Upward (not backward)."
.@RealDonaldTrump: What you say would be 'great again' would not be great at all...We will not go back to discrimination, segregation, sexism, isolationism, racism or the KKK.
Like NY's motto says: Excelsior -- Ever Upward (not backward) https://t.co/nrcUrsYJCO
— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) August 16, 2018
Meanwhile, Nixon is mounting an underdog primary challenge to Cuomo from his left, and she suggested in her response that Cuomo was trying and failing to appeal to progressives with his comment slamming America.
"I think this is just another example of Andrew Cuomo trying to figure out what a progressive sounds like and missing by a mile," she said.
NEW: @CynthiaNixon responds to @andrewcuomo comment that 'America was never that great."
Nixon: 'I think this is just another example of Andrew Cuomo trying to figure out what a progressive sounds like and missing by a mile."— Zack Fink (@ZackFinkNews) August 15, 2018
Nixon trails Cuomo badly in the polls, but she's taken credit for a series of liberal moves he's made in recent months. The Atlantic reports:
In the less than two months since Nixon declared her candidacy, Cuomo all but reversed his opposition to legalizing recreational marijuana, which he called "a gateway drug" as recently as last year; proposed a ban on single-use plastic bags, again barely a year after he signed legislation barring New York City from imposing a tax on them; vowed to use his pardon power to restore voting rights to as many as 35,000 felons; and declared a state of emergency at the city’s public-housing authority.
Cuomo made the remark at an event for women and girls and in the context of saying the country couldn't truly be great until there was full equality between the genders. Facing swift backlash online, Cuomo's office attempted damage control by saying Cuomo disagreed with Trump but believed the country was currently "great" and wasn't at its "maximum potential."