Dan Gainor: Cuomo was treated by fawning media as 'acting president' but we’ll never see an apology

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What led to Cuomo ultimately deciding to resign?

Former Federal Prosecutor Andy McCarthy and Fox News Contributor Jonathan Turley react to Gov. Cuomo's resignation on 'The Story.'

The news media treated New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo like an "acting president" in 2020. Now, the world knows he’s just an ordinary thug resigning in disgrace.

Nothing changed. Except the press stopped hiding the facts.

The leftist media adored Cuomo. Sex harassment allegations, abusing staff, bullying politicians and mistreating the press were his M.O. He even helped kill 15,000 New York seniors by pushing COVID-19 patients into unprepared nursing homes. 

None of that mattered. He was the media’s guy. He was their back-up candidate in case the aging Joe Biden never stumbled along to Election Day. Journalists covered Cuomo’s every wart with pancake make-up and praise.

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They put him on TV, turned the lights on and let him go. CNN had his own pretend journalist brother Chris interview him again and again, laughing, in the midst of a global pandemic. Networks ran his press conferences instead of the president of the United States. They even gave him an Emmy for his "masterful use of TV to inform & calm people around the world." MSNBC’s "AM Joy" host Joy Reid ordained him "a kind of acting president" while Donald Trump held the real title.

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Andrew Cuomo and his little brother Chris, the CNN anchor, combined for one of the cringiest moments in television history. Chris babbled about his brother’s COVID test while bodies piled up across New York and the world, joking that "the doctor's finger went all the way up your nose and got stuck." 

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Then he pulled out a massive swab, probably courtesy of CNN’s prop department, and asked if it was "the actual swab that was being used to fit up that double-barrel shotgun that you have mounted on the front of your pretty face?" In one episode of this sitcom, Chris pushed his brother to run for president.

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Rabid media fans dubbed themselves "Cuomosexuals" without embarrassment. "Daily Show" host Trevor Noah admitted his fandom on an episode of "Ellen," who responded "I feel like I’m a Cuomosexual, too." Fanatics can still buy all sorts of Cuomo merchandise on Etsy from T-shirts to wine (or is it whine?) glasses.

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The press covered for Andrew Cuomo so much that even the scandal that finally brought him down shows how lame and unprofessional the news business has become. He wasn’t destroyed in an epic combat like a movie villain. Instead, he just slithers away in shame, taken down by sexual harassment allegations.

Even there, journalists failed in epic fashion. When the sex harassment scandal really hit the news in January (conveniently after the election), broadcast networks did more than 100 minutes of scandal coverage. Then they dropped the story entirely from April through June. 

His own staff reportedly hid information about the virus deaths tied to his administration that they buried deeper than the thousands of bodies of New York seniors who didn’t survive the pandemic. New York leads all states with "with more than 15,000" "residents and employees of nursing homes and long-term care facilities [who] have died of complications from Covid-19," according to The New York Times.

The press used the sex harassment scandal to disappear the far-worse disaster. And then, when they got the chance, they buried that too.

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There’s still one Cuomo left standing, sort of. Chris has been "vacationing" while being defended by CNN’s chief media correspondent Brian Stelter, who claimed CNN staff "feel a lot of sympathy for him."

Too bad. One Cuomo resigned in disgrace. It’s time for his brother to join him.

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