Drew Holden Profile picture
Mar 2, 2021 27 tweets 23 min read Read on X
🧵Thread🧵

You want bad @NYGovCuomo takes? Then you’ve come to the right place.

It’s good to see folks recognize his failure. But apologies are in order from those who built him into a pandemic hero while he played a villain

Here’s a top-10🧵of the worst culprits (+bonuses)⤵️
10. @Amy_Siskind

I was never holding my breath for Siskind to be a good faith actor but the sheer depravity of her content (this is only a sampling) makes it impossible to keep her off the thread. ImageImageImageImage
9. @voguemagazine (and @chelseahandler and @MollyJongFast)

Listen, my expectations for Vogue weren’t high, but just look at these headlines and ask yourself “is it any wonder @NYGovCuomo got away with what he did?” ImageImageImage
Honorable mention. @BuzzFeed

There were too many great ones to limit this to ten. Adding Buzzfeed to the thread simply because they forced me to read these words.

(Also, given some non-coronavirus headlines, it may be time to retire that survey.) ImageImage
8. @ananavarro

An often overlooked member of the Cuomo News Network team, Ana gets bonus points because she often pretends to be a conservative.

My favorite tweet, though, is from 2013. ImageImageImageImage
7. @MSNBC

There’s only so much you can expect from an openly partisan media outlet, so the bar here was already low.

But giving @NYGovCuomo an unchallenged opportunity to come on and defend his nursing home death scheme? Well. That makes the countdown. ImageImageImageImage
Honorable mention. @CheriJacobus

A thread favorite, Jacobus misses the top ten but certainly managed to keep it weird. ImageImage
6. @washingtonpost (@sarahellison and @bterris)

This article may be the worst of the Cuomo coverage from a mainstream outlet not named CNN, and that’s really saying something. google.com/amp/s/www.wash… ImageImageImageImage
A brief aside here to point out that, with only a couple of exceptions, all of the people in this thread bill themselves as critics and/or objective.

If DCCC says this kind of stuff, well, that isn’t news.

But these folks ARE the news.
5. @neeratanden

Back to the program. Pretty incredible to me that Tanden, famous for being a mean person on the internet, had nothing but incredibly complimentary things to say about Cuomo. ImageImageImageImage
4. @CNN

It takes a lot to have so much badness that, even spread across an entire network, it’s still damning. But from their nightly Cuomo Bros saga to their ridiculous coverage, CNN has earned this spot. ImageImageImageImage
Honorable mention. @SethAbramson, a man who needs no introduction.

I will point out, though, that each of these tweets were within two weeks of Cuomo’s having signed a decree requiring nursing homes to accept coronavirus patients. ImageImageImageImage
3. @JRubinBlogger

It is a testament to the outrageous level of Cuomo fangirling that Rubin barely cracks the top three. Here’s just a sampling of some of her remarkable tweets about Cuomo that have aged...imperfectly ImageImageImageImage
(This will always be my favorite tweet of all time) Image
Honorable mention. @SteveSchmidtSES

Where stupid goes, Schmidt and company are never far behind. The Cuomo situation was unsurprisingly no different. And this from a man who still pretends to be conservative about a liberal Governor. ImageImage
2. @JoyAnnReid

I’ll let the tweets speak for themselves. Just barely missed the top spot on the countdown. ImageImageImageImage
1. @ChrisCillizza

Even above his network, Cillizza’s fangirlish coverage stands alone as the most egregious.

We can leave it to history whether @NYGovCuomo was a “terrific bureaucrat” who “benefited from radical transparency” but let’s just say that I’m skeptical. ImageImageImageImage
There you have it, folks. The worst of the worst, in my eyes, accounting for both content and reach.

There are a lot of takeaways here, but I think one of them is pretty simple: stop worshipping politicians.

Lots of them are just bad people, and eventually the truth will out.
Perhaps the best takeaway is that, when a fawning mainstream media & blue check environment tells you a Democratic leader is without blemish, it probably just means that there are no blemishes that those folks are interested in talking about, even if many might exist.
It’s important to call out that, interspersed with these awful examples, there was a lot of reporting - particularly from local outlets - that was really, really good.

Here are a few examples from @NewYorker, @propublica, @NY1 and @ABC7 ImageImageImageImage
And this was also true among lots of conservative outlets and individuals, like @WSJ, @FoxNews (especially @JaniceDean) and the NY Post. ImageImageImage
But in a lot of ways, this just makes it even more intellectually & morally bankrupt that so many people talked about @NYGovCuomo the way they did.

So many of his faults and failures were already on the record.

These people just willfully ignored them. Which is unconscionable.
Post script honorable mention - if you can make it through anymore cringe, please watch and listen to this whole video from @TheDailyShow.
And let’s just say that the coverage of @GovRonDeSantis was...a little different. Previous 🧵 for your reference/those mentioning it.
This may finally be the time some of these folks block me.
Folks will ask on occasion if they can support the work that goes into these. I’m flattered, but your local food bank needs that money a lot more. For those in DC, Capital Area Food Bank does great work. capitalareafoodbank.org
Special shout out to @MollyJongFast for finding a way to concede she was wrong while seemingly blaming everything and everyone but herself. thedailybeast.com/my-cuomo-crush…

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More from @DrewHolden360

Dec 2
🧵Thread🧵

Biden’s pardoning of his son Hunter says an enormous amount about the president’s views of justice.

But it also says a lot about the willingness of the mainstream media—the nation’s noble fact checking corps—to repeat bogus claims that suit Democrats.

Remember? ⤵️
For starters, let’s revisit the coverage of how Biden wouldn’t do what he just did.

Biden said he wouldn’t pardon his son, no way. He would trust our legal system.

The media repeated it at every turn, without a shred of incredulity.

Here’s @washingtonpost Image
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Seemingly every outlet did the same. @CNN had a couple of my favorites.

Look at the lede in on this first one.

The media’s job isn’t to simply repeat what politicians tell them. Whatever happened to “defenders of our democracy” and all that? Image
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Read 27 tweets
Nov 26
🧵THREAD🧵

The news that MSNBC may soon have a new owner (and that it might be a certain X power user) compelled me to finally open my “MSNBC conspiracy theories” screenshot folder and, woo boy, there are a lot.

If you’d like to revisit them, buckle up, and follow along. ⤵️
There’s nowhere better to start than with Russiagate.

Do you remember the promotion from @chrislhayes, @MalcolmNance, @maddow and others at @MSNBC that perhaps Donald Trump was a Russian agent?

I, for one, will not be forgetting. Image
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But there was plenty of other insanity from the gang at MSNBC about Russiagate.

Here are just a couple.

The first seems apropos with Trump again picking a cabinet. Image
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Read 32 tweets
Nov 20
Whatever happened to Harris and Biden’s “strongest economy ever” that the media spent so much time hyping up in the lead up to the election?

I revisit the claims, and explain why they were off the mark about the economy all along, in my latest @AmerCompass.

Quick🧵thread🧵⤵️
It can be easy, in the wake of an election, to forget just how dominant a media narrative was.

One that’s already fading from view was how “great” the economy was, and why it would benefit Harris on Election Day. americancompass.org/its-still-the-…
As a refresher, check out this headline from @axios about the data.

@YahooFinance upgraded Biden’s economic grade to an A. That captures the press sentiment at the time quite well. Image
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Read 15 tweets
Nov 18
🧵Thread🧵

In recent days, the mainstream media has taken nakedly ridiculous claims about the tattoos of @PeteHegseth, Trump’s SecDef nominee, to spin up a story alleging he’s an extremist.

It’s an egregious example of politically driven “journalism.” I unpack why. ⤵️
The story really started with @AP, who ran an article claiming that two tattoos that @PeteHegseth has have ties to extremism, citing an extremely thin (and downright suspect) report.

They used that to label him a potential “insider threat” in their headline. Image
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It wasn’t until 3 paragraphs in that a reader was told what that claim rested on: a tattoo of a Latin phrase. They’d go on to mention “concerns” about a cross tattoo as well.

Really. @AP Image
Read 21 tweets
Nov 14
Would be great if Trump’s unconventional picks for his cabinet inspire the media to consider a nominee’s credentials.

They might want to look at the current HHS Secretary, Xavier Becerra, who brings to the table the medical experience of being in Congress for 12 terms. Image
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Or perhaps Obama’s former HHS Secretary, Sylvia Matthews Burwell, who had just finished her stint lobbying for Walmart. Image
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Or Donna Shalala, Clinton’s former head of HHS, whose credentials were as a university administrator and feminist. Image
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Read 4 tweets
Nov 4
🧵Thread🧵

Mere days before the election the media, en masse, invented a conspiracy theory alleging Trump threatened Liz Cheney with violence.

Below you’ll see what Trump actually said, and how outlets decided to report it.

Maybe the most dishonest coverage I can recall. ⤵️
The quote comes courtesy of @PhilipWegmann, who does fantastic, real journalism.

Look at the quote. Then look at this headline from @washingtonpost.

Does one follow the other?

No. Trump is making a theoretical point about politicos who cheer for war from the sidelines. Image
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And of course it wasn’t just WaPo. Here’s @nytimes doing the same thing.

I’m sticking with the side-by-side format throughout, because I need you to understand the extent of the fabrication. Image
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Read 23 tweets

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