Blockbuster News! Cuomo Quits, Denies All Wrongdoing

BUCK: Governor Cuomo had his lawyer sitting before the Seal of New York in really what looked to be an official capacity — which was pretty strange when you think about it, outside counsel sitting in the governor’s chair — to present his side of the case, pulling apart, picking apart piece by piece every allegation of impropriety against Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Didn’t interview all the witnesses. Didn’t give transcripts for all the witnesses they did interview. No governor’s side presented. Just going through it like a defense attorney would, but doing it in what seemed to be an almost quasi-official capacity during a press conference, and then followed up immediately by the governor. Now, the governor’s position on this is he might have been a bit insensitive.

You know, he’s from a different generation, Clay. He’s a guy who sees things through an old and perhaps out-of-date lens. But at worst he gave some degree of offense or discomfort without actually intending to. At worst, he was an older guy who was trying to be affectionate and supportive, he says, not actually someone who’s a predator or coercing or doing any of the things that we were led to believe last week were going on.

Clay, what I see here, my man, is delay and redefine. He even mentioned how long the process would take to impeach him, how difficult it will be at a time when the City of New York and the State of New York need excellent leadership. And the rest of it seemed to me to be, “What’s really harassment, though? What’s the difference between a touch on the back that you mean as a friend versus a touch on the back for sexual gratification?” Clay? He’s definitely not resigning, but is he even going? What do you think?

CLAY: Let me just say this: Andrew Cuomo believes that he has a skill in talking to the people of New York and, in a larger context, to the people of the country and that he can persuade them that what he did may have been —

BUCK: Wait a second, Clay. We got breaking news. He’s saying he is stepping aside!

CLAY: What?

BUCK: We gotta take this live. We gotta take this live. Can we bring this?

BUCK: All right. Okay. Clay, my mind is completely blown.

CLAY: Your mind is blown! He did exactly what you said he would never do, and I’m just saying: We got so much to unpack here.

BUCK: I was talking to people on New York state legislature and council, and, as of yesterday they’re like, “He’s gonna at least fight it.” He must have decided… (laughs) There was no advance warning of this at all. Clay, he had his lawyer come out and basically say all the allegations against him are untrue. He came out and said, “Yeah, I made a few mistakes, but no big deal.” It looked like we’re in the last two minutes of the press conference and he’s like, “Actually, I’m out.” I’m stunned. Stunned!

CLAY: What did I say yesterday?

BUCK: Absolutely stunned.

CLAY: This feels, listening to this, like it might be an argument that he tries to come back in 2022.

BUCK: (sigh)

CLAY: He’s gonna resign. He’s done it in time to potentially put himself into the Democratic primary. He used this opportunity… Just think about it. Just think about it. He used this opportunity to make the case that he did nothing wrong but that he was stepping down because of the mess that would be caused if he were going to be impeached. He now can step away and say, “I did nothing wrong,” and, in theory, if he sits out for a couple of months, he could come back and try to get reelected, then he’s wiping all the problems clean, and he is the governor again in 2022.

BUCK: It’s stunning. Stunning. Clearly, there was a reputational protection strategy here. Why have your lawyer come out, right? He could have… First of all, he could have resigned the first time out. So, clearly, he thought —

CLAY: He could have also resigned in the first five minutes of this speech —

BUCK: Right.

CLAY: — as opposed to when we were listening, we cut it out ’cause we’re thinking, “Okay, he’s not gonna resign,” and then he drops the bombshell. Again, if you try to think like Andrew Cuomo —

BUCK: Right. This is a theory. You may be right.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: (laughing) But I will tell you right now, in the prediction game? My God! Resigning like this?

CLAY: He doesn’t… He can’t disappear, right? So, if you think about this, what is the end goal? It is to maintain his relevancy. Instead of getting dragged through the mud, he gets the final word in some way. Everybody took this live — Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show — and he decides to suddenly pivot at the very end and say, “Hey, despite the fact that I did nothing wrong, I’m gonna fall on the sword basically for the betterment of New York.”

Two months’ time, Buck, or whatever the time frame is, he comes back. He reemerges, he says he’s a changed man, he’s learned, and he’s running, and he gets to run against maybe the woman who said that he was a sexual harasser, Letitia James. He gets to run against whoever the other Democrats are that would rise up and be interested in this job. And the ultimate vindication he can claim is — if he gets the nomination — that the people of New York still believe in him, they still believe in Andrew Cuomo, and he can run again in ’22. I’m not saying he’s gonna do it, but I’m saying all these pictures —

BUCK: Right, I think we also should spend some time on why he decided to resign now, as much as the future component of this is interesting as well.

CLAY: I think that’s the answer. But yes. This is blockbuster news breaking live literally as we were on the air. You heard it with us in real time.

BUCK: I’ve never seen a press conference like this. Usually, this leaks. Clay, this didn’t leak beforehand.

CLAY: That’s what I’m saying. Nothing.

BUCK: Nothing. There was no one saying this. There was no expectation that he was gonna resign today in the media, no one leaked. Anyway, we’ll come back into this. (laughing) I gotta say, I am shocked, absolutely shocked. I didn’t think he was gonna do it; he did it. So there you go. Nobody can really predict the future.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CUOMO: I love New York and I love you. And everything I have ever done has been motivated by that love. And I would never want to be unhelpful in any way. And I think that given the circumstances, the best way I can help now is if I step aside and let government get back to governing. And, therefore, that’s what I’ll do, because I work for you. And doing the right thing is doing the right thing for you. And my resignation will be effective in 14 days.

CLAY: That is New York governor Andrew Cuomo blockbuster news. I mean, it’s rare to actually have blockbuster news, but I think that’s fair to say. Literally as we were coming on the air, we were listening to the beginning of this press conference. They then opened the show and as we opened the show, he makes the decision to resign.

One of my first thoughts is, “Is he gonna have to give back the Emmy that he won, Buck? Will they rescind that?” But we are trying to figure out exactly what went on. My theory is that he’s trying to set the table to come back in 2022. But, in the meantime, Buck, you live in New York; you’ve been talking to a lot of people ever since this scandal began. It’s fair to say you are stunned that he has made the decision to resign in the method and manner in which he did just in the last 20 minutes.

BUCK: There must have been conversations with Democrats behind closed doors in the state legislature where they just said, “We don’t care; there’s nothing you can do,” ’cause Cuomo’s known… This is a guy, just so everyone understands, who will call and threaten city councilmen personally — threaten their careers, obviously not like mob boss style.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: But he’ll say, “You cross me and you’ll suffer the consequences.” He’ll call them at home at night. He’s known to do this. This is somebody who is considered one of the most vindictive and just difficult people to work with in politics in New York, in Albany, which is a very corrupt place to begin with. And just the fact that this didn’t leak!

The fact that you didn’t get that precursor announcement. It’s amazing that he also did the whole, Clay, the lawyer coming forward beforehand. What was that? What’s the purpose of that? Maybe to forestall or to push aside some of the actual criminal investigation that’s going on, to give him protection at some level for that?

It did not seem at all… We knew that we were down to the last couple of minutes before we came on air. No way it seemed like he was about to resign based on the 20 or 30 minutes you had heard before then and then he just switched gears and said, “I’m resigning.” It’s crazy.

CLAY: I think the only way it makes sense — because your point is a good one. He laid out for people who didn’t hear it, a very detailed defense against all of the allegations of sexual harassment that have been put forward against him, and then at the very end — and he may have handwritten this; he may have added it at the last minute — he decided that he was going to resign after he had already made his defense. Why would he do that? To me, the only possibility — the only possibility — is he’s trying to set the table to be able to come back.

BUCK: Or, Clay, he just couldn’t handle the political pressure because he had no allies and they wanted him to go.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: Welcome back to the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show where Clay and I are just sitting here dealing with… People use the term “bombshell.” “Breaking News” is abused all the time.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: They’ll run breaking news banners or CNN for “Artifact Found From the Titanic! Really Shiny! Breaking News!”

CLAY: (laughs)

BUCK: They’ll put nonsense on. This is breaking news, folks. The governor of New York, after Fauci at one point, the biggest Democrat hero of the pandemic. Let’s remember that. He was getting Emmys for his covid press conferences. He got a $5 million book deal for his covid leadership. He was getting people writing into him, putting hashtags on social media, calling of themselves “Cuomosexuals.”

There were celebrities who were talking about how gorgeous and brilliant and amazing he is. There was even talk of him standing in as the last-minute Democrat candidate for president of the United States in 2020 because he was so amazing. Clay, now he had a lawyer come out and say that basically all the charges against him are false and uncorroborated.

He comes out and spent about 20-30 minutes telling everybody he just was trying to be affectionate, no big deal. And in the last moments, Governor Cuomo resigned effective 14 days from now. I’m gonna say this, man. I think this for a lot of folks — I don’t speak for myself — is the biggest political surprise to the establishment, perhaps, or to some section of the establishment since Trump — or certainly the biggest shock overall with him stepping down since Trump won in 2016. This is seismic.

CLAY: Yeah. Look, I don’t disagree with any of that, and I think spinning it forward, the question is… You raised, I think, a good point, which is this didn’t leak at all. So we know a lot of Cuomo’s advisers had abandoned him. So it’s possible that he laid out this entire defense and then at the very end pivoted and decided that he was going to resign.

I always look, anytime a politician makes a choice like this, whether you love or hate Andrew Cuomo — and, look, I think he is one of the worst governors. If you look at his record with covid and if you look at these allegations regarding sexual harassment, I think he’s one of the worst governors that any state has elected, certainly in the twenty-first century.

And if your goal is to protect your citizens based on the way he responded to covid with the nursing home collapse and everything that spiraled out of that — which, miraculously, is not the reason he is ending up having to resign, which is wild to think of. It’s the other scandal, the #MeToo element getting him here. I think you have to think, Buck, what is his goal?

So the easy read here — we talked about this a little bit — was he was going to be impeached, right? The votes were there. He knows that he wasn’t going to be able to survive an impeachment process in New York, and that was going to take some period of time to play out.

So, if you know that you’re going to be forced out of office, then you are left with options. Do you choose to go out on your own terms, or do you fight tooth and nail until the bitter end when they remove you from office? And, in what way, based on those decisions, do you best preserve your political viability? ‘Cause I just don’t think…

I could be wrong. I just don’t think Andrew Cuomo is gonna throw up the peace sign like Richard Nixon did and hop on a helicopter and fly away and never run for elective office again. I think he’s trying to think, “How do I — trapped in this corner with no real moves — in some way still preserve a viable political future for myself?”

BUCK: So the way that he’d have to gauge that would be, “Which is the worst situation? Is it to…?” This is a resignation in disgrace. He can call whatever he wants, but he’s resigning because 11 women came forward and said he’s a grabby, creepy, sexually harassing bad guy.

CLAY: And their stories were confirmed, by the way.

BUCK: There’s corroboration from different people, et cetera. So, he is resigning in disgrace. So, you’re telling me you think that he’s preserving the possibility of a total political reversal in the future, which is at least legally true, right? He could run again legally.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Okay. Fine. But, in the meantime, I think that you have to look at why did the Democrat Party turn on him from the White House on down, all the way down to the statehouse? This guy was left with no allies.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: There were people who would say when… You have to look at some of the other situations where there were calls for resignation. You had the Al Franken situation, where it seems like the takeaway now — and I don’t know if you see it this exact same way — but the takeaway now is maybe that was actually too harsh on Franken for Democrats.

CLAY: They overreached. I think that’s correct. I think they acknowledge they overreached.

BUCK: And then in Virginia there was the Northam/Fairfax/Herring —

CLAY: (laughing) Yeah.

BUCK: — the top three members of the executive branch for the state of Virginia. Now, Fairfax had two sexual assault allegations. He’s the number two guy, but Northam and Herring —

CLAY: Both had blackface issues, right?

BUCK: — had blackface situations in their histories.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: None of them, none of the three stepped down for their various issues, and I think there was a sense of okay, we’re kind of just admitting that Democrat Party has no principles. So now —

CLAY: Well, also it would have ended up with a Republican in power, right?

BUCK: That’s right.

CLAY: So, the lieutenant governor in New York —

BUCK: Had resigned, which —

CLAY: All three were forced, but I think the idea was kind of ridiculously funny in retrospect. But each of them had their own unique scandal that, if one resigned, the next would be the target and the next would be the target then you would end up with a Republican governor. Whereas it’s so dominated by Democratic Party in New York, that isn’t the issue here, right?

BUCK: I just also… He thought he was gonna… I’m not gonna say this because I really believed he was gonna fight it out, and I own that this guy resigned and I didn’t see that. I didn’t see that coming and neither do the people I know working in Albany. Keep in mind I talk to Republicans —

CLAY: To be fair, no one saw this coming.

BUCK: Yeah.

CLAY: Even in the middle of the speech, you and I turned it off because we thought he’s not resigning.

BUCK: I watched every minute of it. Clay and I were watching the speech together, and we were saying, “Okay, so he’s getting in the trench.”

CLAY: Defending himself as much as he can.

BUCK: Yeah. “He’s getting ready to go. It’s gonna take months, but he’s gonna fight it out. He’s gonna defend his reputation.” So, here’s one thing I think is apparent. The first thing when we talked about it, he was planning to fight this in the first speech. Why would you do this twice?

CLAY: Right.

BUCK: In the first speech, he was planning to take it on.

CLAY: He was gonna go to war.

BUCK: But I think that he underestimated, one, the control that the feminist left wing of the Democrat Party actually is able to exercise in contemporary Democrat politics at some level, and I think he also believed that his allies in Albany and, you know, that he would be able to sort of retreat to his home base. Pablo Escobar style when he decided to go back up into Medellin where people would remember him and take care of him when the government was actually really starting to track him down.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: But Cuomo basically went to Medellin and they said, “No, we’re actually gonna hand you over.” (laughing) That seems to be what happened.

CLAY: So, here’s the question that I think we need to discuss as we go forward — because he’s gone now, right? And we can talk about the impact of what that means for the Democratic Party. It doesn’t seem that substantial in the state of New York. For the moment, it would take Andrew Cuomo off as a potential 2024 contender, right?

If you’re Kamala Harris, you’re probably having a nice toast of your wine glass or champagne because — presuming that Joe Biden’s not going going to run — this knocks down another heavyweight in the Democratic Party. But do we actually believe that he’s done? I think that’s the big question here. Is he actually going to be done going forward, or is the way in which he did this trying to preserve a future for him? And that’s going to be —

BUCK: There’s one piece that we do have to enter into the where this will go, and that’s sort of down in the future quite a ways. It’s like us sitting here and saying, “What’s the composition of the House gonna be in the midterms?”

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: We can kind of guess, but it’s a long way off.

CLAY: But will he run? I think that’s gonna be really interesting for the nomination.

BUCK: So, the assumption is that his lieutenant governor —

CLAY: Who just took him down.

BUCK: — is obviously stepping in. That’s the way the system works, the attorney general, Letitia James, who is, I will say, within New York state politics rather broadly — not even just from the Democrat Party — people like her. I have friends who like and respect her. They don’t agree with her, but they say, you know, she’s a reasonable actor on a number of different, you know, state-affecting policy issues. Clay, she’s gonna step in to run on the Democrat ticket for governor.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: So, think about the optics again. Look. Predictions, everyone’s got them, and sometimes we get ’em wrong. (chuckles) But you’re gonna have the black female Democrat darling who just put out the report to destroy Andrew Cuomo’s political career running for governor! (laughs) He’s gonna run against her.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Oh, my God.

CLAY: Because he’s going to be able to argue, Buck, that her entire report was political and was about giving her the opportunity to be governor. That’s my theory.

BUCK: I… (laughing) Look, man. Clay, we are living in a world today where I gotta feel like anything is possible. But that would be almost as mind-blowing as what just happened if he pulls it out. But, hey.

CLAY: That’s what I think may happen.