So, New York Governor,
Andrew Cuomo, is apologizing after,
now, a second former aide has
come forward and
accused him of sexual harassment.
This weekend, former aide Charlotte
Bennett, a health policy adviser in
the Democratic Governor's
administration until November told
the New York Times that Cuomo asked
her all sorts of inappropriate
questions about her sex life,
including whether she had ever
slept with older men.
And I should note that
she's younger,
Cuomo is much older than her.
So, it was easy to kind of connect
the dots and figure out that he was
trying to refer to himself there.
Charlotte Bennett said the governor
had asked her numerous
questions about her personal life
including whether she thought age
made a difference in romantic
relationships and had said that he
was open to relationships with
women in their 20s.
Wow, what a revelation, an older
man is interested in a relationship
with a woman who's much,
much younger, wow.
Comments that she interpreted as
clear overtures for obvious reasons
to a sexual relationship.
And I wanted to give you this quote
from Charlotte Bennett.
She said this,
he asked me if I believed if age
made a difference in relationships.
And he also asked me in the same
conversation, if
I had ever been with an older man.
I understood the governor wanted to
sleep with me and
felt horribly uncomfortable and
scared and was wondering how I was
going to get out of it and
assumed it was the end of my job.
And that power imbalance is a huge
problem, because he's her boss, and
he's asking her incredibly,
inappropriate, invasive questions.
And it puts female employees like
her, like Charlotte Bennett in
a terrible position and it takes a
lot to come out and speak out about
her alleged experiences with Cuomo.
And I should also note that this
is now the second former aide who's
come out and alleged that he had
sexually harassed her.
>> Yeah, so look,
Cuomo's in trouble.
So, the nursing home situation was
a debacle to begin with.
And now this layered on top is
a very powerful one-two punches.
Now, but let's break it down.
So, let's just do political
analysis for
a second of how this plays out.
There's of course a substance that
Ana talked about whether there is
harassment in the first
place, right?
That's a more important issue.
But when you look at
the politics of it.
So, if it turns out that he tried
to kiss the first person that came
out, and that's what she alleged.
Well, then he's in a world of
trouble.
You cannot cross that line.
Now, Andrew Cuomo swears up and
down in his public statements that
he did not do anything physical.
So that will be pivotal.
Then, number two.
If it was just joking around in
general, which is what Cuomo
statements seem to indicate,
then he would almost certainly
survive that politically.
Whether you think he should or not,
he would definitely survive that.
But the middle ground one and where
it'll be interesting politically.
And for a lot of you will not be
middle ground, is the flirting.
It's the unsolicited and
fairly clear flirting with both of
these women.
Now, I say fairly clear.
But to be fair, if these accounts
are right, it's definitive.
That's definitely flirting, right?
It's not really in question.
Now, he can come out and
say they're not correct and that's
not how the conversations happened.
And in one of the cases on
the plane, he has witnesses to back
him up on the strip poker comment
from the first set of allegations,
right?
But, if it turns out he really did
say these things, well,
just from a political perspective,
we're going to see how many allies
he has and how many enemies he has
in the state.
And we're going to see how much
people are enraged by it.
And this is not good and
it certainly does not speak to all
older Americans but
a lot of older Americans think that
flirting is not that big a deal.
Now, a lot of you will be enraged
by even hearing that opinion but
I'm not saying it.
I'm relaying to you what older
Americans think, because
I've seen it in other stories.
Younger Americans on the other hand
think it's totally unacceptable.
And then he's got to resign if
he does that.
So, there's that battle too.
So, that's what makes it a really
interesting story on many levels.
>> Yeah, absolutely.
And I do want to give you
his apology.
Because he doesn't apologize for
what he said, he apologizes for
how it was interpreted.
But I think that this so
called the apology is important to
mention because he's not denying
that he made these comments.
So, he says, I now understand that
my interactions may have been
insensitive or too personal and
that some of my comments,
given my position, made others feel
in ways I never intended.
I acknowledge some of the things I
have said have been misinterpreted
as an unwanted flirtation.
To the extent anyone felt that way,
I am truly sorry about that.
So, that's not a denial.
It's also not really a full
blown apology.
It's more of a if I have offended
you, I do apologize for that.
But what I do also kind of
find interesting Cenk is that,
this is an important story, don't
get me wrong, and it's something
that should be investigated.
But I do find it interesting that
Cuomo's scandal regarding his
cover up of mass deaths in his own
state because of decisions he made
related to the Coronavirus pandemic
in nursing homes,
didn't really seem to get as much
attention as this does.
And I just find that questionable,
to be honest.
>> Ana, you're so
right about that and
it's actually super frustrating.
It's not to say that this story
shouldn't get attention, it should.
>> Definitely.
>> But the press is obsessed with
anything related to sex.
And so,
it's not that they shouldn't be
obsessed with these allegations.
It's that they should be at least
as obsessed with all the people
that died in the nursing homes.
So, Cuomo made a really terrible
decision to take them out of
the hospitals, COVID patients and
put them into nursing homes.
I mean that was just flat
out disastrous,
then he clearly covered it up.
And let alone the Medicaid cuts
that caused the problem with
the hospitals in the first place.
So when you put all that together,
that is a massive story.
And it got some play but
these allegations are getting a lot
more play.
So and, look,
some of you might think, hey, Cuomo
is a giant corporate Democrat, so
I don't really care what gets him.
I do care about the principles and
I think that the nursing home story
is one that people should stay on
because that's just so important to
how you actually govern.