People Cannot Believe That Andrew Cuomo Actually Resigned As Governor Of New York

It’s the end of an era. A groping era? That’s allegedly what’s been going down with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who announced that he’s stepping down from his position, a year after he led New York out of the first pandemic wave. This move arrives after recent damning developments, including the governor’s response to the New York Attorney General’s office release of a 165-page report that summarized the sexual harassment investigation against him (including a claim that he groped a state trooper on his detail). And then Cuomo (arguably) made it worse for himself by rolling out a montage of him touching and kissing people. This was his attempted defense, while he attempted to say that he wasn’t a groper, a touchy-feely-kind-of dude. Yikes.

The ill-advised photo montage (which was preceded by the gaslighting of his alleged victims) even provided plenty of ammunition for Fox News to grab the ball and run into toward the end zone.

It was an almost universally panned move. As HBO’s John Oliver put it, “It’s frankly incredible that Cuomo thought releasing an irrelevant montage of photos would somehow exonerate him. Apparently his strategy for literally any crisis is ‘Put together a PowerPoint, and that’s it.’” Yep, and since all of this backfired (and perhaps also due to a fresh investigative report from Ronan Farrow in The New Yorker), Cuomo saw the writing on the wall and resigned in a speech that he streamed on the governor’s website.

Here’s part of what Cuomo said while stating that he was “too familiar with people” but never admitting to wrongdoing:

“This is one of the most challenging times for government in a generation. Government really needs to function today, government needs to perform. It’s a matter of life and death government operations. And wasting energy on distractions is the last thing that state government should be doing. And I can not be the cause of that…. I think that given the circumstances, the best way I can help now is if I step aside and let government get back to government, and therefore that’s what I’ll do, because I work for you, and doing the right thing, is doing the right thing for you.”

Cuomo’s resignation will be effective in 14 days with Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul coming into view as his successor.

Well naturally, people are losing their minds and cannot believe that Cuomo is actually stepping away after appearing to dig his heels in for the long haul. Cuomo did so dramatically (and without taking ownership of his alleged actions), and people noticed.

“Cuomo said he knows people have boundaries,” one of the most telling Twitter reactions declared. “He also told us all he loves us.” Yup.

And on a more serious note… (with Dan Rather getting the last word):

(Via NBC News & Variety)