The past 15 months have been pretty rough for the Brothers Cuomo.
Andrew, the disgraced former governor of New York, was forced to resign in August 2021 after multiple women accused him of sexual harassment. Chris, a.k.a. "Fredo," the disgraced former CNN host, was accused of sexual harassment the following month. In November, the New York attorney general's office revealed that Chris Cuomo offered to share information that could discredit one of his brother's accusers. CNN fired him in December.
Since then, Chris Cuomo got his own show on NewsNation. (We haven't heard of it, either.) Apparently the ratings are very low. Meanwhile, Andrew Cuomo has been hiding "in shame" while "spending all his time trying to come back" to public life. A New Yorker puff piece published on Halloween, however, suggests the elder Cuomo's comeback is already underway.
The disgraced governor has become a self-proclaimed "vodcaster like … Joe Rogan." The first episode of his video podcast, As a Matter of Fact… With Andrew Cuomo, aired Oct. 20 on Quake Media, a subscription service that also produces shows by Laura Ingraham, Mike Huckabee, and Pete Rose. Anthony Scaramucci, who served for 10 days as Donald Trump's communications director in 2017, was the featured guest. They both agreed that Cuomo was a "victim of the woke radical left" and "cancel culture."
Cuomo aims to foster a "political dialogue" that isn't "dominated … by the extremes." He also wants to look good while doing it. The New Yorker observed Cuomo discussing a new promo video with the studio manager, who agreed to "put the nose filter on" after the former governor complained about how big his schnoz looked. He also bragged about losing 20 pounds since his resignation, which ended his reign as the most successful governor of New York "in modern history."
The bragging continued. Cuomo congratulated himself on winning an Emmy for his COVID-19 briefings in 2020. The award was rescinded the following year, but Cuomo appears to have forgotten. "Didn't we win an Emmy?" he asked an aide. "Where is that Emmy? I remember seeing the statue!"
The interview got even weirder as Cuomo strolled the streets of Manhattan, where he was recognized by a woman "smoking what appeared to be a crack pipe" in a doorway. "I loved when you were [governor]," she said. They hugged, and the woman pretended to kiss his cheek, which inspired the ex-governor to make what he thought was a compelling point about why he is the real victim.
"She hugs me, she kisses me. That was sexual harassment?" he said. "No, it's not."