As a young reporter covering New York politics, I was shocked at how frequently city and state officials lied to the press. They did it on big issues and small ones, to your face and in writing, on the record and off the record. It was so automatic and casual that it seemed instinctive.
I once mentioned my dismay to Murray Kempton, an older, courtly, onetime Post columnist whose generosity of spirit extended even to the most venal, as long as they weren’t politicians.
Kempton looked at me with a seen-it-all shrug and declared: “Why shouldn’t they lie to you? They lie to themselves all the time.”
Which brings us to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Monday press conference where he declared, “I have told you the facts on COVID from Day One … I told you the truth.”
That’s a provable lie and a damnable one, too. But in the spirit of Kempton, who died in 1997, let us consider the possibility that Cuomo no longer has the ability to distinguish truth from untruth. Having lied to himself for so long, lying to the public comes naturally.
As Hyman Roth might have said, this is the business he’s chosen.
Cuomo’s business is politics and, in his own weird way, he’s very good at it. He has conquered Albany like no one in modern memory.
He used to say the state needed a strong governor and Cuomo has been that to a fault.
A Democrat at birth, he early on worked with Republicans who controlled the Senate so he could triangulate with centrist Dems. Now that far-left Dems control both houses, he has pummeled them into submission, striking fear into their timid hearts.
His approach is pure carrot and stick: The carrot is that he won’t use the stick if you submit.
Recall that back in March, on the same day the fourth and fifth women came forward to accuse him of sexual harassment and calls for his resignation grew, Cuomo threatened to release unspecified allegations of corruption against legislators collected by the state ethics panel.
Recall, too, the claim by Queens Assemblyman Ron Kim that Cuomo threatened to destroy him after he accused Cuomo’s office of covering up the number of nursing home deaths.
“You have not seen my wrath. I have been biting my tongue for months,” Kim quoted the governor as saying in a phone call. “I can tell the whole world what a bad person you are and you will be finished, you will be destroyed.”
Such reports have two impacts. First, everyone in New York is horrified. Second, everyone in New York is less inclined to cross Cuomo.
His competition with his father is his last remaining challenge, and there are only two ways to win. One is to get a fourth term as governor, which Mario failed to do.
The other is making it to the White House, which Mario wanted but could not bring himself to actually seek.
If he can accomplish one or both, Cuomo the Younger will have vindicated himself in his own eyes.
If not, well, the thought of failure is unbearable, so he must win, no matter the truth about his handling of COVID or anything else. Even as the number of sexual harassment allegations grew and grew and grew, Cuomo made it clear he would never resign.
Quitting would be death and so he sent the clear message that he wouldn’t go without a scorched-earth fight. Even Albany Republicans seem to have shrunk into their corner, afraid to bait the bear.
Although Cuomo escaped one potential US Justice Department probe on nursing home deaths, he is far from free and clear. Another federal examination of an alleged coverup of nursing home deaths is ongoing, as is the investigation into sexual harassment allegations.
That is being carried out under state Attorney General Letitia James, and it is serious enough that Cuomo was in hiding for a week after his daylong interrogation. His strategy of late has been to undermine James’ credibility by having his aides insist it’s all “just politics” and that she is angling to run against him next year.
Cuomo himself also threw mud at the investigators James chose for the probe, saying Monday, “Look at who the independent investigators are. Do a little history, go to Google … and tell me what you see.”
I read his effort to distract and obfuscate as a sign he knows he’s in trouble with the facts. He’s a lawyer pounding the table as a last resort.
Yet political blood sport is not for the faint of heart and if James and her team can’t take the heat, they will quietly fold by issuing a mealy-mouthed “he said, she said” report. I don’t expect that to happen, but if it does, nervous lawmakers can then throw up their hands and say there is nothing they can do either.
Such an outcome would be a double whammy, infuriating both the women making the allegations and compound the anger and suffering of those who lost loved ones in nursing homes.
For both groups, there is a cruelty in Cuomo’s lack of remorse, especially his heartless cold shoulder to the grieving nursing home families. His initial claim of ignorance about the fateful Department of Health order soon morphed into a hostile defense of it, complete with threats to take away the licenses of nursing home owners that effectively silenced those who had evidence of his culpability.
Given that pattern, and the fact that he made $5 million on a book celebrating his leadership, the governor’s bid to paint himself as a victim of politics is weaselly. Indeed, as lies go, it’s such an unconvincing one, you have to wonder if he even believes it himself.
Is Joe a vax doubter?
Exactly how much confidence does the Biden White House have in the COVID vaccinations?
The plan to recommend masks for some who got the jab in certain situations risks bolstering the resisters. After all, if the vaccinations work, why go back to the protections in place before vaccines were released?
It’s a good question, doubly so after President Biden extended a ban on foreign visitors.
Both actions follow sharp rises in positive tests for the Delta strain. But with much lower increases in hospitalizations and deaths, the moves smack of a knee-jerk panic and a prelude to another round of economic shutdowns that put some 22 million Americans out of work in the early days of the pandemic.
Instead of stepping up his lagging vaccination efforts, Biden seems to be distracted and looking in his rearview mirror. As any driver knows, that’s a sure way to crash.
The name game
Reader Lawrence Fox, noting the Cleveland Indians will soon be the Cleveland Guardians, is curious, writing:
“Does this mean the Piper Aircraft company and the US Army are required to change the names of their planes? Many of their aircraft share common Native American names, such as Apache, Kiowa, Cherokee, Comanche, Blackhawk, Navajo etc.”
