Gov. Andrew Cuomo is in New York City, with nothing public planned.
When will the governor face the public and explain himself on the Moreland/NY Times story?
He kept out of sight yesterday too, instead issuing press release after press release about everything in the world except Moreland.
Is he going to stay hidden for the rest of the summer, then re-emerge in September and claim the Moreland mess is old news, he's focused on the "now"!
Is he hoping people are just going to forget about the whole thing and leave him alone?
Is he in denial about the whole thing?
I don't know what the idea behind Cuomo's strategy for dealing with this is, but he's only going to be able to remain hidden for so long before he becomes a national punchline, much like his beloved Common Core.
You know, the "tough as nails" governor who can dish it out but can't take it.
The sheriff who rode into Albany to "clean up" the cesspool but made things much, much worse.
And no matter what he does about the public and the press, one person who will not be deterred by games is the US Attorney for the Southern District, Preet Bharara.
Bharara sent that message to Sheriff Andy yesterday.
So stay hidden all you want, Andy - you'll have to surface eventually and deal with the heat and if you've got legal problems because of your Moreland conduct, hiding at Billy Joel's house isn't going to save you.
UPDATED - 10:00 AM: Turns out Governor Cuomo is already a national punchline, courtesy of Jon Stewart:
The questions surrounding Gov. Andrew Cuomo's administration's alleged meddling in a corruption probe has officially become a late-night punchline.
Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" took on Cuomo's role in its lead segment Thursday, where host Jon Stewart roasted Cuomo's marked shift on the independence of the Moreland Commission, which he created last year with the broad charge to investigate public corruption in New York.
Stewart played a clip of an interview with Cuomo at the beginning of the probe, saying the commission had the ability to look at his or anyone else's operations. He contrasted that with Cuomo's office's more-recent comments to The New York Times -- that the panel couldn't have investigated him because of conflict-of-interest concerns.
"You know that's (expletive) ridiculous, right?," Stewart asked. "You know the I-made-it, I-can-do-what-I-want-with-it excuse only works for George Lucas, right?""
More from Stewart:
"It turns out Gov. Cuomo may be like the boss at work that says, 'Yeah, no, we'll play hoops at lunch. You can go hard.' And then when Jimmy from accounting blocks his shot and drives the lane, he's like, 'Hey, you're not allowed to touch the ball because I started the game.'"
And it also turns out that Cuomo's already arguing that the Moreland Times story is "old news":
Rather than taking questions on the report, the Cuomo administration points to a 13-page response it wrote to the Times. Officials also claim many of the facts in the story had already been reported by other outlets, making it old news.
That didn't take long.
Is there a Common Core Standard for integrity? This dude's gone into "scared weasel" mode.
ReplyDeleteIt will be interesting to see when he re-emerges. The thought goes that it could be later today because whatever gets reported about that will end up in the little-read Saturday paper. But I think he'll stay out of sight today as well. My guess is, he'll make a public appearance with Billy Joel, both on their motorcycles, then pull a Reagan and make believe he can't hear any questions from the press over the noise of the motorcycles (the way Reagan used to do when heading for helicopter.)
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