Andrew Cuomo Blames “Cancel Culture,” Not Sexual Harassment Allegations, for Calls to Resign

Since February 24, Andrew Cuomo has been accused of sexual harassment or inappropriate behavior by more than half a dozen women. The first, former aide Lindsey Boylan, claimed the governor forcibly kissed her on the lips. Another, Charlotte Bennett, said he asked her if she had ever had sex with older men. On Wednesday, the Times Union of Albany reported that after summoning an aide to assist him with a “minor technical issue involving his mobile phone,” Cuomo “allegedly reached under her blouse and began to fondle her.” The allegations, all of which Cuomo denies, come as the governor is reportedly under investigation for a nursing home death-count cover-up—in addition to separate accusations of simply being a bullying asshole who fosters a toxic work environment. (According to New York assemblyman Ron Kim, Cuomo threatened to destroy his career for speaking out over the nursing home scandal. On Friday New York magazine published a text exchange in which Cuomo’s top aide responded to a state senator who’d criticized the governor by calling her a “bad person” and a “revisionist liar” who had a “big mouth” and was “full of shit.”)

Not surprisingly, the calls for the governor to resign have reached a fever pitch. By the end of the week, a majority of New York Democrats, including Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, had demanded he quit. Yet not only has Cuomo defiantly maintained that he‘s not going anywhere, he’s now claiming he is the one who’s the victim here.

In a news conference for which Cuomo did not appear in person but called in over the phone, the governor attacked lawmakers for saying he should resign, called them “reckless and dangerous,” and said they were doing so because of “political expediency” and “without knowing any facts and substance.” Insisting that he retains the support of the people of New York, he said he would not bow to “cancel culture” just because of more than half a dozen allegations of behavior ranging from creepy to sexual harassment.

At one point during the conference, Cuomo suggested, very strangely, that he was being punished because he is “not part of the political club,” an extremely odd claim coming from the son of a former governor and a 40-year veteran of state politics. He also implied that the women who’ve made allegations against him are liars:

As Slate noted on Friday, cancel culture, as defined by its critics, “is a process in which mostly decent people are fired from their jobs or shamed into quitting because they have failed to meet impossibly high standards of progressive sensitivity.” That…doesn’t appear to be what’s happened to Andrew Cuomo here.

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