The latest report from the Washington Post about New York Governor Andrew Cuomo suggests that his intemperance goes beyond merely sexually harassing and possibly assaulting women employees.
Cuomo also has a serious anger problem. And given what we know about his little brother, the governor’s employees aren’t the only innocent victims of a Cuomo’s terrifying wrath.
As The New American reported in stories about CNN’s Chris Cuomo, he too is given to public rages that would cost a lesser person his job. Two years ago, the younger Cuomo threatened to attack a man in a bar. Last year, he rousted a cyclist near his home on Long Island.
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Angry Governor
The work environment for Andrew Cuomo’s aides and state employees is “toxic,” the Post reported.
The second paragraph of the newspaper’s exposé on the rage addict reports that Cuomo uses language that would mean certain dismissal for a state employee:
Two male aides who worked for Cuomo in the New York governor’s office say he routinely berated them with explicit language, making comments such as calling them “p***ies” and saying, “You have no b*lls.”
Defenders admit the governor is “demanding,” and has “great expectations.” That’s one way to describe it. Another is that Cuomo verbally abused employees.
“Longtime staffers described what they said is a Jekyll-and-Hyde aspect to Cuomo: charming one moment, raging with anger the next,” the Post reported. “With gallows humor, former Cuomo aides joke about their therapy bills from absorbing his rampages for so many years, according to three former administration officials.”
One woman employee recalled her days working for Cuomo when he was secretary of housing and urban development for President Clinton:
“You didn’t know which Andrew you were going to get,” said one woman who had worked at HUD as a political appointee during Cuomo’s tenure as head of the agency.
She recalled one incident of Cuomo yelling at her in his office so loudly that colleagues came to check on her well-being. She said she cannot recall why he was so upset or the words he used but said: “I remember thinking it was pretty vicious and over the top, like if I had killed somebody. Not even my own parents had ever yelled at me the way he yelled at me.”
Cuomo brought women to tears. One man turned “beet red” after a Cuomo tongue-lashing.
“Staffers avoided the seats next to him, as though physical distance would somehow protect them from his wrath,” the Post reported.
Said one appointee:
“People were terrified of him. You couldn’t forget it. Anyone who tells you they don’t remember is not telling the truth. Everybody got their turn, including me.”
Said another, “He always has to be the smartest person in the room. He will beat people down so he is the only person standing.”
Of course, Cuomo wasn’t the “smartest person in the room”; otherwise, more than 9,000 New Yorkers wouldn’t have died after he forced COVID patients into nursing homes.
That aside, maybe that “Jekyll-and-Hyde” personality is why harassment victim Lindsey Boylan called him a “monster.”
Furious Fredo
The explosive temper the Post described invites the questions of whether the anger runs in the family, and whether the Cuomo boys need psychiatric help or at least anger management classes.
Little brother Chris, host of his eponymous Prime Time program, could be worse. He says he wants to beat people up and has threatened to do so.
First time around, August 2019, Cuomo was in a bar. A patron called him “Fredo,” a reference to the stupid, weaker, younger brother of The Godfather’s Michael Corleone.
Cuomo erupted. “You’re gonna have a problem,” he said.
“What are you gonna do about it?” the patron asked.
“I’ll f***ing ruin your s**t,” Cuomo told him. “I’ll f***ing throw you down these stairs like a f***ing punk.”
Cuomo also challenged the man to swing at him and call him Fredo again.
Yet Cuomo had referred to himself as Fredo, as did CNN’s Ana Navarro-Cárdenas on Cuomo’s own program.
Less than a year later, Cuomo threatened a cyclist near the CNN talker’s ritzy home on Long Island. The cyclist saw Cuomo, who had COVID at the time, outside with his family. He was supposed to be inside — quarantined — per his brother’s statewide orders.
The cyclist wanted to know why Cuomo was outside. Cuomo, the cyclist said, “just ranted, screaming, ‘I’ll find out who you are!’”
The cyclist also reminded Cuomo of his own brother’s mandate.
“This is not the end of this,” Cuomo fumed. “You’ll deal with this later. We will meet again.”
Fredo didn’t threaten to fit the cyclist for a Chicago Overcoat, but the message was clear: Watch out.
Cuomo later said he didn’t like his job because he can’t give people a piece of his mind, which wasn’t a problem in these two cases, and that he really wished he could lay down a beating when someone needs it. “I want to be able to tell you to go to hell, to shut your mouth,”Cuomo said. “I don’t get that, doing what I do for a living … me being able to tell you to shut your mouth or I will do you the way you guys do each other.”
