Andrew Cuomo Reminds Us That He's Really Quite Terrible at This

On Wednesday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo flew a little bit too close to the sun while cosplaying as a committed leftist in his neverending battle to one-up challenger Cynthia Nixon.

“We’re not going to make America great again. It was never that great,” Cuomo said at a speech described by the New York Times as “ostensibly a bill-signing ceremony” for legislation to make sex trafficking a felony, but which reportedly focused “heavily” on President Donald Trump. “We have not reached greatness. We will reach greatness when every American is fully engaged. We will reach greatness when discrimination and stereotyping against women, 51 percent of our population, is gone, and every woman’s full potential is realized and unleashed, and every woman is making her full contribution.”

“When that happens,” he continued, “this nation is going to be taken even higher, because we have not yet fully liberated the women in this country, and we will, and New York will lead the way.”

Most of this is objectively true, although I’m not exactly sure about the idea that “every woman” isn’t making her “full contribution.” This is not, however, the kind of thing that politicians typically say, especially not when you’re the face of the New York political establishment. And while Cuomo was clearly taking a potshot at Trump, it was also an implicit dig at the ill-fated Hillary Clinton catchphrase “America is already great.” (Clinton endorsed Cuomo back in May.)

Unsurprisingly, Cuomo’s comment was jumped on by Republican gubernatorial candidate Marc Molinaro, who wrote a statement and then tweeted it out with the words “Please Retweet” like he was trying to draw some attention to a new track on his Soundcloud. But less than three hours later, Cuomo’s office put the governor’s hot take directly back into the oven.

As the Times noted, when Cuomo announced his first run for governor in 2010, he did so in a video where he said: “Together, we can make New York great again.” Make up your damn mind, man.