DC comms. Hill alum. Freelance commentary writer. Bylines: @nytimes @NRO @washingtonpost @FDRLST & more. Views my own. Keeper of receipts. Maker of 🧵threads🧵
@NYGovCuomo put on a clinic in hypocrisy today during his press conference.
Here’s a side-by-side of his previous comments around sexual harassment, particularly in the workplace, vs. what he had to say today about himself.
Spot the difference?⤵️
First and foremost, let’s talk about zero tolerance.
Back in January 2018, Governor Cuomo was a believer in zero tolerance for sexual harassment in the workplace.
Well, apparently that only extends to people who aren’t “elected by the people of the state of New York” huh?
A few months later, about three years ago, Cuomo said that New York was “leading the way forward” and that “this behavior must stop” about sexual harassment.
Yet somehow it took 3 more years for Cuomo to figure it out I guess.
I know there’s stiff competition, but the dumbest thing happening right now is that people are pretending Tanden’s nomination was sunk because of racism/sexism and not the fact that she’s spent years calling the people voting on said nomination evil racist dirtbags.
Valuable life lesson here: If you call people soulless vultures, in public, for years, they may not be inclined to help you down the road!
Yes, very fascinating that the woman who said “The Republican Party is - amazingly- both morally and ideologically bankrupt” is not getting more support from Republicans! What could explain it?!
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.
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?”
Nothing so perfectly captures the distinction betwen the chattering class and everyday Americans as this piece.
While normal people worry about paying their bills and their kids' educations, Rubin et al are relieved that our new president can act sufficiently sad for her liking.
This is also jarringly ahistorical. Whatever else you may think of Lincoln, it's revisionist to say that he provided "comfort for a national tragedy" when he **was assassinnated** while people **were still fighting the Civil War**
And, conversely, it's silly to say that Biden is providing comfort in any meaningful way now (although hopefully he will soon! that would be great! and he seems well-suited!) - unless somehow this speech has comforted the whole country alongside Rubin (I'm skeptical)
A lot of media outlets are more comfortable extending charity to terrorists than conservatives when they leave this life.
The passing of Rush Limbaugh was the latest reminder. If you don’t believe me, look how his obits stack up to Iranian butcher Qasem Soleimani.⤵️
I ask this earnestly:
If your only exposure to each man was @nytimes’s respective obituaries, would you rather be Rush “divisive style of mockery, grievance and denigrating language” Limbaugh or Qassim “master of Iran’s intrigue” Suleimani?
It would be one thing if this were just one outlet with an off-color and confrontational obit.
This is peak ‘play stupid games win stupid prizes’ territory. I think Haberman’s general contention is probably true but it’s because people like Haley invest their time and energy trying to play sides/win favors rather than have principle/govern.
So if you’re a pol whose moral and intellectual center isn’t enough to ground you (see Haley, Nikki) then, yes, you’re going to get burned and snubbed.
Which I think is a feature, not a bug, of the system. It punishes fake people far more than it does people who are committed to something (even something you or I may not like) - people with some kind of through-line, like Romney or Larry Hogan, Cotton or Mike Lee.
This is a bad faith argument. Student loan debt is disproportionately held by those w/ higher incomes, and those in the lowest quartile own the lowest percentage of it.
Student debt forgiveness represents an enormous financial transfer from the financial have-nots to the haves.
Also, that money is disproportionately owed by those who took on debt to go to grad school - including just about anyone who owes over 50k.
Even if you concede AOC’s worldview (I certainly don’t), why is that decision something anyone should subsidize? brookings.edu/policy2020/vot…
There are lots of bad arguments about student loan debt forgiveness but the most frustrating (to me) part is that it does the opposite of what its advocates call for: it transfers money from poorer, more racially diverse people to wealthier, whiter people. It’s VERY regressive.
@NYGovCuomo’s fall from grace has been quick, dramatic...and deserved.
So it felt like a good time for a side-by-side to revisit how fawning (and downright silly) some of the media coverage was back in the Spring.👇
There’s no better place to start off than with @CNN & @ChrisCillizza. At left, we have a take from March. At right, we have last week.
Let me know when you can spot the difference.
Perhaps @ABC’s new reporting can add some context and color to this piece from March, titled “The coronavirus crisis is the moment Andrew Cuomo has prepared for all his life.”
The walls are closing in on @NYGovCuomo. Last night, news broke that his office hid 9000 Covid patients sent back to nursing homes.
Why’d it take so long to come out? I’ve got a theory: The media wasn’t interested in accountability.
Don’t believe me? Take a look👇
Some context. @AP scooped that @NYGovCuomo & his admin had hidden the number of Covid patients his rules had returned to nursing homes - spreading the pandemic among the most vulnerable - to avoid DOJ scrutiny.
Nursing homes account for 1/3rd of ALL US deaths in the pandemic.
But you would have no idea that Cuomo was anything less than perfect if you spent your time watching @CNN.
It’s really hard to overstate not just the frequency of the coverage but it’s abject lack of anything that could be called honest journalism.
Suspending my disbelief here for a second, is there any evidence that double-masking is meaningfully more effective than single-masking?
Have seen a lot of people ask in seeming good faith what the harm is. To me it’s pretty clear: asking or telling people to do something that is some measure of inconvenient for no good reason is bad on it’s face and fosters resentment. That’s before we get into mask scolds etc.
One of the clearest lessons through the pandemic has been that people in general and Americans in particular don’t like to be told something is helpful or important when it isn’t either. Doing so undermines trust (for good reason!) in the institutions doing the telling.
So if I’m understanding the former-GOP types, we’re supposed to take:
• morality advice from those who lied us into Iraq
• political courage advice from those who protected a child predator &
• decorum advice from the original inflammatory shock jocks
Have I got that right?
There are a lot of examples of this but a few really jump out.
On the first one, the fascination with who Colin Powell, chief cheerleader of the lie that Iraq had WMDs, will vote for.
On what authority should anyone care?
This is the guy whose opinion you’d like me to put more stock into?
I was more sympathetic to this kind of stuff in 2016.
But this is mostly bullshit childishness from people with more interest in feeling like the good guys and earning the praise of their Democratic friends than their conviction.
Parties change over time, often in ways that people won’t like. But we’ve only got two of them. Do you want to affect change? Or do you want Politico to talk about you for being brave?
Seems to me that lots and lots of political types prefer the latter. The game hasn’t gone their way and so they would prefer to pick up the ball and go home.
In my book, that probably means you’re apathetic, lazy, or a coward.
A good and timely piece from @RyanTAnd, who is an under-appreciated intellectual titan on social issues.
In my five years in DC, I’ve never been as blown away by a speaker as I was the first time I heard him. Quick (and not particularly profound) story. wsj.com/articles/relig…
When I was on the Hill, Heritage Foundation held weekly briefings for staffers. I went mostly because my boss said I should; I thought they were often too punchy and provocative, in the way that conversations among people who all agree can be.
The transgender issue is one I’ve long thought conservatives need to approach with more compassion and charity. So when I saw that there was going to be a Heritage speaker on trans-relates issues, I figured the talk would be frustrating and dispiriting at best.