‘Which came first, President Trump or the degradation of our political system…?’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has spent the bulk of his career raising more questions than providing answers or solutions.
He’s been known to point fingers and cast glances more often at Washington, D.C., than Albany.
Like rats on a sinking ship, many are now fleeing the tax-onerous Empire State, and others appear to be poised to do the same as the once-vaunted Democratic Party finds itself splintering into pieces.
In a Washington Post op-ed posted Thursday Cuomo addressed those worries by asking an additional 35 questions.
Although he previously ‘ruled out’ having any designs on the 2020 presidential race, the article seemed to clearly signal otherwise.
Intending to target opponents such as President Donald Trump with the rhetorical barrage, however, his questions seemed equally effective in highlighting Cuomo’s own deficiencies and myopic, far-left perspectives.
Political Degradation
In his leadoff question, Cuomo asked: “Which came first, President Trump or the degradation of our political system: Which was the cause, and which was the effect?”
He either was in denial about the answer, or at least had a very short memory—and hoped his audience did also.
The word “degrade” was, in fact, used often in the context of President Barack Obama—notably over his brazen insertion of partisan politics in areas where other presidents had sought to unify the country and build national consensus.
Then-House Speaker Paul Ryan issued a blistering attack against Obama following his 2016 State of the Union address for pettily turning it into a campaign stump-speech even though he wasn’t running.
As New York’s governor, Cuomo likewise has done his share of dividing, such as lighting up the World Trade Center—a symbol of national unity and resilience—in pink to celebrate his state’s passage of a late-term abortion bill in January.
Of course, one could argue that President Bill Clinton with his Oval Office conquests was the ultimate degrader of the Office of the Presidency—at least in the modern era.
But the rancor that Obama brought to his eight years—after the relentless political attacks on quintessentially moderate GOP leaders like President George W. Bush, Sen. John McCain and Gov. Mitt Romney—led Republicans to draw a red line in 2016.
One of the most effective qualities Trump has embraced as a political figure is his willingness to return fire when the Left “goes low” and to answer them in kind with an offense taken directly from their political playbook.
As much as Democrats try to turn his desire to make the country great into a liability, and to show disdain and contempt for any sort of patriotism, Trump offers no apologies.
Social Media
In the series of questions that follows Cuomo took aim at the president’s use of social media, evidently forgetting again how scores of obsequious reporters and all-around Obama fanboys dubbed Trump’s predecessor “the social media president.”
Scholarly-looking books were churned out that fawned over this bold new way for Obama to take his message directly to the people, a modern-day equivalent of FDR’s fireside chats.
Naturally, the advantage lay with Democrats as social media giants like Twitter, Facebook and Google were openly rooting for Team Obama.
But of course, whenever Democrats’ own weapons are used against them, they quickly become anathema, eliciting on the Left a derisive bitterness for the same qualities that once made them magical.
Fake News
The governor directed his next set of questions at the media—specifically the cable-news media, bemoaning the fact that it has become partisan and click-based, as well as unreliable.
Question No. 6: When did we stop believing what we read in the press?
Perhaps his brother, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, would be in the best position to instruct him on the inner workings of fake news.
Lesson No. 1: How to hammer Russian collusion without evidence.
The left-wing media has only itself to blame for its exponential decline in credibility—there is not, nor should there be, a political solution to the First Amendment dilemma.
But politicians like Gov. Cuomo are complicit in the mainstream media’s downfall for tacitly abiding such irresponsible journalism when they benefited from it, torquing up the debate with hyperbolic exaggerations and making an entire cottage industry out of spinning the press—often with debunked or discredited talking points.
Competitive Advantage
Cuomo next pivoted from Trump-bashing to an underhanded slap at some of his Democratic colleagues.
As he desperately attempted to carve out his own centrist path, ignoring his record of radical leftism and corruption, Cuomo asked obliviously why unions that operate as partisan political machines had become an enemy of the middle class.
But there seemed to be no connection between the stifling regulations and demands that liberal big-government imposes on private enterprise and the decline in competitive innovation and visionary undertakings.
Ironically, Cuomo also puzzled over the fact that America has lost “our competitive advantage” in efforts to build bridges and skyscrapers—a day after New York City officials voted to ban many of the city’s skycrapers if they failed to become environmentally compliant with Green New Deal demands over the next few years.
The governor himself even followed up his article in short succession with a press release touting his goal of 70-percent renewable energy in keeping with the Green New Deal.
Cuomo was at odds not long ago with GND’s champion, the socialist-spouting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez, over the catastrophic withdrawal of Amazon from its New York headquarters plans.
Perhaps an unequivocal condemnation of the radical anti-capitalist movement would be much more effective than asking, “Gee whiz, how did that happen?”
Identity Politics
Cuomo seemed genuinely confused by the divisiveness that has overtaken the Democratic Party as its own interest groups find their agendas at odds with one another.
He asked: When did the political left become an enemy of the political left and the Democratic Party become a circular firing squad?
Cuomo bemoaned the infighting between the radical Left and the even more radical Left—which has manifested itself in conflicts over Islamophobia versus anti-Semitism; trans-rights versus feminism; unemployment versus immigration; and an elitist power-structure of moneyed, dynastic career politicians like the Cuomos against the populist, anti-establishment uprising.
Such is the natural and inevitable conclusion of building one’s platform around divisions instead of unity, promising to make the majority assimilate to meet the demands of the fringes rather than the other way around.
And yet, for all his puzzling over divisiveness, Cuomo couldn’t help but deploy some of the loaded hate-think that is woven into the very fabric of leftist dogma.
His article invoked the perennial boogeyman–canard of white supremacy, while making no mention of parallel violence from radical leftist hate groups like Antifa.
When did white supremacists become so emboldened that when they rally in our streets they no longer feel the need to cover their faces with hoods?
Theater of the Absurd
Cuomo’s last volley of questions veered into more cerebral and abstract territory, pondering when we, as a country, lost our sense of humor, our respect for history, our political courage, and when Democrats began to abandon many of their self-declared virtues.
But once again, the man doing the complaining—implying that he is somehow the antidote to it all—has spent eight years in an executive state-level office pandering to political acrimony and inviting it.
Cuomo’s first step to solving the country’s problems would be to practice what he preaches by stepping down from the New York governorship, giving all his family money to charity and disappearing into obscurity.
His series of questions ultimately raised one more: Is he that oblivious, or purely hypocritical?