Cuomo, the previous anchor of the 9 p.m. hour at CNN — “Let’s get after it,” he’d exhort his viewers nightly — is talking out to advertise his about-to-debut show, “Cuomo,” on NewsNation. If his remarks to Swisher are any indication, it can characteristic commentary starting from dead-on correct to self-serving to a tad delusional.
In the delusional basket belongs the sense of public service that he derives from the collection of interviews he did with then-Gov. Cuomo when covid-19 began raging in 2020. “When Jeff [Zucker] decided to have Andrew on, I believe it was the right call because the country was desperate and starved for comfort,” mentioned Chris Cuomo. Perhaps some people might have derived consolation from the Cuomos’ fraternal banter. Others mocked it, and the overwhelming majority of America ignored it or didn’t understand it was happening to start with.
In protection of the line-crossing interviews, Cuomo identified that media critics didn’t howl about the association on the time. “They did so later,” he mentioned. Correct: They did so when it grew to become plain that Chris Cuomo would cowl his brother when issues had been going nicely — in the course of the early days of covid, that is — and conceal when issues began to slip downhill — in the course of the scandals that emerged in early 2021.
The resolution to interview his brother was “a little bit of an impossible situation,” Cuomo advised Swisher — and it wasn’t his plan within the first place (a declare that squares with earlier reporting by the Erik Wemple Blog regarding the push from Chris Cuomo’s higher-ups to do the Cuomo-on-Cuomo segments). “[W]hen I did have him on, it was not about news and covering a governor of state. That’s all I’m saying. And I don’t think that it’s an easy case to make against me that I don’t know how to test people in power.”
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FollowBoldface added to spotlight a violation of the Erik Wemple Blog’s Don’t-Tell-Me-You-Host-a-Talk-Show Rule. There was a sure brand that fronted Chris Cuomo’s present each night time: “CNN,” it mentioned. That stands for “Cable News Network.” As lengthy as that brand is current, viewers anticipate news. Over on Fox News, host Sean Hannity has tried to wiggle out of moral binds — whose heinousness far exceed something within the Chris Cuomo oeuvre — by arguing that he works as a “talk show host.”
Best to not even dabble in an argument superior by Hannity.
Cuomo was fired by CNN in December 2021, after New York Attorney General Letitia James launched transcripts that confirmed his involvement in his brother’s pushback operation. A CNN assertion additionally referred to a different consideration within the personnel resolution, which was later reported to be a sexual harassment allegation from Cuomo’s time at ABC News. Cuomo has denied that allegation.
As for the revelations that he assisted with his brother’s fruitless efforts to battle sexual harassment allegations, Cuomo mentioned that he wasn’t the “main guy” — that he was a “side piece” (his time period, not ours) within the large PR assault. Thousands of pages of testimony from the New York AG assist this model of occasions, as this weblog reported in December 2021. “Chris sends me a lot of things a lot of the time. Half of it I don’t engage in. He gives unsolicited advice,” famous Melissa DeRosa, who served as Andrew Cuomo’s high aide, in her testimony.
That dynamic makes Chris Cuomo’s trajectory doubly painful: He risked his profession to ineffectively help his brother. When Swisher requested Chris Cuomo about his relationship with his brother, contemplating that “he kind of got you fired,” Chris Cuomo responded, “He’s my brother.”