The karma train comes for us all in the end, and it has mowed down the Cuomo brothers with a delicious savagery.
As the Babylon Bee put it: “Unemployment Rate Among Cuomo Brothers Rises to 100%.”
The schadenfreude is irresistible.
Like President Biden and his medical adviser Anthony Fauci, the Cuomo brothers are just two more public figures deified by the media in a quest to destroy Donald Trump who have fallen from grace with a thud.
More will follow as the ancient adage that we all would be wise to heed is fulfilled: “Character is destiny.”
Of course, the moral compass at CNN is so awry that it dithered for months over the inevitable decision to jettison its highest-rating prime-time star over his efforts to help his brother, disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, fight off sexual-harassment accusations. Chris Cuomo’s hemorrhaging ratings the past year tell you that the viewers were not impressed.
Finally, during the Saturday- night graveyard shift hosted by “Cuomo Prime Time’s” oily replacement wannabe, Jim Acosta, CNN announced Chris was out.
“Chris Cuomo was suspended earlier this week pending further evaluation of new information that came to light about his involvement with his brother’s defense,” CNN’s statement read. “We retained a respected law firm to conduct the review, and have terminated him, effective immediately.”
The statement went on to cite “additional information” as a factor in CNN’s decision, which The New York Times later reported is related to sexual-harassment allegations against Chris. It must run in the family.
Tuesday’s suspension was prompted by new documents released by New York Attorney General Letitia James, which removed any doubt that Chris had transgressed the rules of ethical journalism to save his brother’s undeserving hide.
Text messages revealed that he used his journalistic contacts to ferret out information that would be damaging to some of the 12 women who had accused his brother of sexual harassment and ultimately forced the governor’s resignation in August.
He lied to his viewers and CNN. Anyone who initially gave him a pass for sibling loyalty no longer had that fig leaf to hide behind.
“I never made calls to the press about my brother’s situation,” Chris told his audience.
Yet messages between him and his brother’s top aide, Melissa DeRosa, show that he agreed to use his “sources” to find dirt on Andrew’s accusers and to forewarn him of damaging stories about to break.
“When asked, I would reach out to sources, other journalists, to see if they had heard of anybody else coming out,” Chris admitted to investigators in a six-hour interview.
But he denied doing “opposition research” to traduce the women: “I would never do oppo research on anybody alleging anything like this.”
The AG’s probe showed that was a lie.
“I have a lead on the wedding girl,” he messaged DeRosa, referring to a woman who claimed Andrew tried to kiss her at a wedding.
The investigation also uncovered a message from Chris to Democratic strategist Lis Smith, forwarding a complaint about another of his brother’s accusers, Charlotte Bennett, dating back to her college days.
Chris told investigators he did not recall receiving any complaint related to Hamilton College, but Bennett didn’t believe him.
“In addition to scouring the internet for personal information about me, he reached out to his professional network with the hope of intercepting additional allegations against his brother,” she tweeted last Tuesday. “[We have] learned just how far Chris Cuomo was willing to go to discredit, silence and smear women, like me, who came forward to report Governor Cuomo’s sexual misconduct.”
Chris Cuomo’s behavior was unethical and dishonest and brought shame on his colleagues.
But it is not a surprise, considering how callous he and his brother were at the height of the pandemic.
Breaking the norms of journalism and basic decency, Chris interviewed his brother at least nine times between mid-March and the end of June last year.
This covered the period of the governor’s fatal order forcing New York nursing homes to accept Covid-infected patients. We now know this led to the deaths of at least 13,000 seniors.
At the very time that this needless tragedy was unfolding, Chris was using CNN to burnish his brother’s image and help create the myth of superior pandemic leadership that Joe Biden latched onto during his campaign as a way to discredit President Trump.
Democrats and their media allies managed to fool a lot of Americans into thinking the governor’s Emmy-winning (yes, really) TV performances during the pandemic were actual leadership, despite the fact that New York boasted the second-worst COVID fatality rate in the country.
At the same time Andrew was busy covering up the nursing- home deaths, he was getting his staff to help write the self-praising book for which he would get a $5 million advance from Penguin Random House. It was obscene and shames the lot of them.
For grieving families, the last straw was the Cuomo brothers’ infamous comedy routine last May 31, when Chris pulled out an oversized Q-Tip, joking about swabbing Andrew’s large nose for the coronavirus.
If anyone knew why seniors died needlessly in nursing homes, it was Andrew Cuomo. It takes a special kind of sociopathy to yuk it up on TV when you have presided over such a tragedy.
It was the sight of the brothers laughing with the Q-tip that activated mild-mannered Fox meteorologist Janice Dean, who was mourning the death of her parents-in-law in a nursing home. Her grief turned to anger, and she became the governor’s No. 1 nemesis, the light against the darkness.
The moral of the Cuomo story is that bad people who abuse their privilege and believe the rules don’t apply to them do get their comeuppance.
It’s comforting to know the moral universe still operates in an age when good is so often presented as bad and bad as good.
The final icing on the cake will be when the Tappan Zee Bridge gets its name back and the Cuomo name fades into ignominy.
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