Chris Cuomo (0:00)

This is going to be controversial. I'm going to get a lot of shit, and I don't care because it matters. Okay? I'm Chris Cuomo. Welcome to the Chris Cuomo Project. I'm pissed off. And I know so many of you are pissed off, and I want to talk about it. And we got to get past judging whether people have the right to be pissed off about what's happening in our society, because all of that noise, all of that counterproductive judgment and infighting is keeping us from what matters most to the many, which is what to do about our anger, our disaffection, our disillusionment. I'm pissed off. Now, look, you can say, why would you be pissed off? Life is good for you. Well, look, one, all pain is personal, okay? Two, you don't know my life. You know what I tell you about it. And, and three, look, we've all learned this lesson many times over. People who are making a good living, the idea that they must therefore be happy is as stupid as thinking, you know, that money makes you happy. Okay? You got rich people problems, you got poor people problems, and then you've got problems that are gonna happen no matter what you have, right? Cancer comes at everybody. Addiction comes at everybody. Depression comes at everybody. Illness comes at everybody. Doesn't matter, doesn't discriminate by checkbook, right? So I'm pissed off about our politics. I'm pissed off about how I've been treated within our politics, okay? And I'll say things now that people are going to edit selectively and put out to play Gotcha. And try to make me look bad, because that's where we are. And that's part of the problem is that that's the currency, is owning people, destroying people. Gotchas, wrecking, breaking. It's all bullshit. It's all reductive bullshit. It's all just feeding on the hate and the enmity and the animosity. And I get it. And it's easy. It's so easy. I could just rebrand this podcast and make it just an all out assault on the right every day. Just kick their ass, go after the pod bros, go on with the comics and just yell back at them about what they don't Gaza and what they don't know about Israel and what they don't know about the economy and what they don't know about tariffs and what they don't know about Trump and what they're making, okay? And how they're full of. And if they want to really get angry let's get angry, and maybe we'll get really heated. Maybe I'll smack the out of somebody. Maybe I'll get into a fistfight. Maybe I'll lose. Maybe I'll win. Wow. It'd be great clickbait, wouldn't it? Chris Cuomo. Dex. So and so. So and so. Dex. Chris Cuomo. Because that's where we are, right? And it pisses me off. And, hey, look, I can look at the system and say I haven't been treated well by it. I got kicked out of the media. You want to say he wasn't canceled. He was canceled. I won't say who, but this fucking useless celebrity contacted me after I got fired and was like, I just want you to know you weren't canceled. You were just fired. Your brother was canceled. It's like, who the fuck are you to, like, render some kind of judgment, some crowdsourced consequence? But I got fired. Why? Because the media didn't like my brother, and they wanted to take down a bold face name, which was a big problem with me, too. And some of you find this ironic, but I think that's maybe to you, but it isn't. I am an ally to the cause of women being able to be honest about what happens in the workplace. And I believe that diversity is a strength. And I believe the more that our institutions and our places of work reflect our communities, the better. You just want the best of everyone. White guys, great. Mostly white guys, fine if they're the best. Black women, great. More black women than white men, fine if they're the best. That's all. Just don't let me be typed, that's all. So I am in favor of what the movement was supposed to be about. I just don't like what it became and how it was abused as a gotcha and how it led us into a cycle where allegations are tantamount to convictions and corroboration went out the window out of some misplaced sense of respect of who was the accuser. And there is something to that. There was a culture of silence. There was not listening to women and not allowing them to be heard. And I think it still exists, frankly. But they didn't like my brother, and they created a bullshit conflict that assumed that I was covering his situation while helping him as a brother and an advisor. And that was never the case. I never discussed it on my show except to say that I wasn't covering it. And obviously, he's my brother. And, you know, I have my own feelings about it, but it got too Hot because the media knew they could take me down same way they were taking him down. And my boss caved because he thought it was going to be me or him. And he thought he was saving himself by taking me out. And he made up a story that I lied about what I was doing to help my brother. There was nothing I was doing that I needed to lie about. And anything that was going on, he knew. He was talking to me all the time and my brother all the time. And I can prove it. But that's not the point. The point is I could be pissed off about that. And I was for a while. That wasn't fair. That wasn't fair. But as my therapist taught me, fair is the only four letter word. There is no fair. There's only what you make happen and what happens to you and how you react to it. So I decided, okay, I lost something I can never get back. And it really hurt. I was the number one show on the most powerful media platform on the planet. You can say what you want about the ratings domestically. You go worldwide, cnn, CNN International, there's nothing like them, okay? I'm telling you, I've gotten off the plane in South Africa and being as being as recognized and as well regarded as I was in Akron, Ohio. So it was real. And I was the man there. I was number one. Anderson Cooper is certainly the face of CNN and a big star and I think does the job for the right reasons. But I whooped his ass. And Don Lemon, big personality there was important to cnn. I whooped his ass. I was his lead and he still dropped off for me. I built from Anderson and Lemon dropped from me. Jake Tapper, sure, he's a big face of cnn. I get why he failed in primetime again and again and again before me and after me. And that was a big platform I had. What I said mattered. It was covered by the media with the respect. And you can say it's because they liked what we were saying or whatever, but it was. And that was all taken from me and pisses me off. And I don't like what happened with my brother. And I don't like how my wife and my kids and my sisters and my friends all had to pay a price for being close to me, it pissed me off. And when I hear people say, oh, that was wrong what happened. And when people in the fucking media who want to be on News Nation or be on my podcast talk to me about how, yeah, that was wrong and I never liked or blah, blah, or they said nothing or they Added to it, it pisses me off. I'm angry. So I understand being angry. I understand it. I understand why we have maga. I understand why we have the MAGA mirror on the left. And you can get caught up with which is worse, which is better. I don't give a about that. You're missing what matters. People are rejecting the system. They are rejecting the establishment. It has failed us, the party system has failed us. It is only about its own survival and advantage and keeping us divided on bullshit bases. The people who followed Trump because of MAGA and the people who are on the left now, looking at AOC and Bernie and Zoran or whatever they should be, united working class people, some younger, some middle aged, who believe the system benefits the few over the many and that the people in power lie and abuse their power. And they abuse it in terms of policy and prosecutions and how they drive the media cycle and what's allowed to get away as truth and not. And how elections are run and how they're rigged. Their discontents are largely the same. They are being kept from one another because their common concerns are being overshadowed by manufactured division. Like what transports migrants as demons, whitey as the enemy, white fright as the replacement theory. All of these bullshit phobias, you know, oh, that guy's a Muslim. He must be bad. He must be a jihadi. That's not fair. Now, when you say globalize the intifada and you don't want to, you know, contextualize what that means and you to a lot of places where there are extreme Islamists. All right, now we're changing the. Now we're changing the description a little bit, but just the straight phobia. I don't like it, but I understand the anger. I understand it. You're right to be angry. The people who you've given power to have betrayed you with it, they don't do for you, they do for them. This bill right here proves it. This fucks the people they're supposed to help and helps the people that they said they wanted to fuck. And by the way, I don't believe in that. I don't believe in kill the rich. I don't believe in punishing success in America. This will never be a socialistic society. Do we have aspects of socialism within our policies? Of course. Don't make the word a boogeyman. It's the remedy you gotta look at. Well, what's Medicaid, what's Medicare? Well, sure, you pay in, but Social Security, these are entitlements, these are Socialistic in terms of political science, what's public education, what's snap? You know, what's a lot of programs, they're socialistic. It doesn't mean we're not a capitalist society. Like Germany has a lot of social oversight and big safety net also. But it's a capitalist society. We don't do free here unless you really are indigent. But the idea of sharing capital and government capital and no more profit incentive, that is what America is about, is the chance to come and succeed and be better than. It's the whole reason people come here is to see if they can make it and then be rewarded for that. Not have to give back the fruits of their success so that others who aren't as successful can benefit more. That's not the remedy. See? And that's what the anger obfuscates. That's what the anger shrouds. That's what the anger clouds. That's the anger makes you forget. That's what the anger and the outrage and playing to it, where it becomes a deception and a distraction is when we get to the remedy. Support comes from American Financing. What if you could delay your next two mortgage payments? Got your attention, right? That's right. Imagine putting those two payments in your pocket and finally getting a little breathing room. So many are in exactly this situation. And this relief is possible when you call American Financing today. Stretched by expenses, groceries, gas, bills, they're going up. They said they were going to go down. You're not feeling it yet. You're not alone. Most Americans are putting these exposure expenses on credit cards now. Uniquely American, uniquely dangerous. Okay? Because soon there's like no way out. American financing is designed to alleviate, to show you how to use your home's equity to pay off that debt. You need to call American Financing today before you get to a point where you can't make those payments. 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Those are his priorities. Do those matter more to you than Medicaid? Really? And then they vote for it anyway. Fuck them. Because they're saying fuck you. So I get your anger, but what's the remedy? As long as we stay in this two party system, we're going to stay right where we are, artificially divided in a battle of attrition, a battle to the bottom. A binary battle to the bottom. You are right to be angry. You are right that the dollar doesn't go as far as it can. You are right to look at your parents and say you may not do as well. You are right to think, why did I spend all this money on school and my parents are still supporting me? Why am I in my parents house? Why can't I have what they had at my age? Why? What happened? The same way the middle aged worker is thinking, why is it so much harder for me to make ends meet? Why is everything so much more expensive? Why are these people seeming to get so super fucking rich and I can't save? Why am I leveraged on this consumer debt? Why are they able to charge me this much? Why is insurance able to fuck me in the ass on a daily basis? Why are my rates able to go up this much? How much money are they allowed to make? But then you get into the remedy, well, we gonna take away their ability to make more money. I gotta tell you, I've struggled with this. Why? Well, here's what I boiled it down to. Capitalism without responsibility is just greedy. So how do you build in responsibility? Systemically, endemically. I don't know that you can. You know, Germany does it a little bit with how they bracket in the market. But I don't know, I don't know. I don't know how to do it. I, I mean, I know, you know, theoretically you reward the companies who do it the right way, who pay the right way, who operate the right way. But you know, you can't get away with skirting your taxes and companies Can. Why? Why is so much of the tax code designed for people to get out of taxes? Why? Why are there two sets of rules? Why does it wind up reflecting two sets of outcomes? Why? Why? Why does smoke and weed get punished like you were selling fentanyl to people? I get anger at things that don't seem to make sense, that seem to be just straight up punitive, that seem to be designed to fuck other people. Now, you could say, yeah, you've been part of it. Look, I say fuck you too, because that's not why I've been in this business. Do you know how many times I've thought about getting out of the media? Because I could make as much or more in the private sector with so much less of the fucking drama. And you can say what you want about me. I do not need the attention. I do not live my life that way. You do not see that from me in my personal life. My wife runs a wellness business. It's got a huge celebrity component to it. She's certainly seen out and about, certainly locally. And she deserves to be in terms of. In my opinion. But I'm not. That's not my life. I'm not a. I don't live a celebrity life. I never have, I never will. It's not who I am. It's not what I'm about to. I don't need this that way. I could make the money other places, other ways. I believe in what we do here. I believe in it. And I do it because I'm angry. And I don't see anger as lacking intelligence. I see anger as a motivation of passion. It doesn't mean hostility. It doesn't have to mean violence. It means that I am passionate in a negative, from negative impact, from negative influence. Things I see that I don't like, that I want to change that are unfair to the extent that that exists as a concept. And I want it to change. And what pisses me off is that I feel that you get sold a bill of goods by both of these fringe factions, mirror MAGA with his socialist Free this, Free that. I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that. You ain't gonna do shit. AOC hasn't gotten anything done in Congress. Bernie doesn't have his name on one significant piece of legislation where he thought it up, and it changes the system the way he wants. And you think giving him more power would have been the remedy? He didn't win for a reason. And yeah, his party fucked him a little bit. Yep, yep. But that's on him. He decided to join the Democratic Party to run. He should have stayed as an independent. Socialism doesn't sell in America. It doesn't work for the many. It takes away what matters most here. And by the way, where has it worked? Norway. With their overweighted single factor economy of oil and their little ass population of 5 million. And if you looked what young people in Norway are doing. Have you looked at it? They're leaving. Do you know why? There's not enough incentive to win to excel. Socialism sounds okay to some. It has never worked for the many anywhere. Okay. Support comes from Oneskin. Hey, have you heard about oneskin's Scalp Serum? OS01 hair. People are raving about it. Why? 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So for a limited time, you can try one skin and you're going to get 15% off. You just have to use our code. Cuomo@OnSkinCo. The code is CUOMO. And you get 15 off@OnSkinCo. Now, does that mean that we have it all figured out here? No. We are right now because we are divided. We are weak. We've done it to ourselves. And I get it. But you gotta start looking past the righteousness of your indignation and towards the remedies because we keep making the same mistake. I was way ahead of the curve on not disrespecting the people who are in maga. And I get painted with this brush anyway and it's bullshit. And the same thing with vaccines. I didn't mock people for not wanting to take the vaccine. I mocked you for Thinking you could not take a vaccine and that the man you voted for brought to us, who said it was great and think you were going to have the same access to society in the middle of a pandemic where the vaccine was seen as what was going to get us past that initial variant. And it did. That's what I was mocking. Now people want to say, oh, they knew at the time and it was all rigged and it was just the cold. They're full of shit. And it works. Why? Because outrage sells. Because making you angry and giving you someone to blame is profitable. It's popular, especially on podcasts with smaller audiences. Concentrate that outrage. But what's their remedy? Government? Leave me the fuck alone. I'm a libertarian. What the fuck does that mean? What have libertarians. When have they ever won elections? What have they ever done? What have they ever run? Where has it ever worked? Oh, whoa, this works so well. Works better than that. America sucks until you compare it to anywhere else. And that's why AOC and Bernie live here and not Norway. But the remedies are where we got to start putting our energy. Socialism isn't the answer. Cutting off all the weak people isn't the answer. It's all reaction formation. Don't you see? Don't you see you're being played? You think it's a coincidence that the left in the extreme wanted to let everybody in and created a porous border and the right, as a reaction wants to kick everybody out and deport 10, 12 million people no matter what they mean to communities, no matter what they've done right after they entered the wrong way? You don't think that's a coincidence? You think that's a coincidence? That it's not related? Of course it is. You don't think that these guys on the left being fundamentalist and appropriating the oppression of Gazans has nothing to do with the white power play that was going on with maga? You don't think targeting of whitey and white neighborhoods on the left is reaction formation of that? You don't think that this side wanting to cut services for as many people as they can and make them the problem, like migrants and poor with work requirements when you don't even have a problem with people working? We're at almost full employment. But you're going to pretend that the savings are about people who don't want to work when they're really about is just stigmatizing people who are poor and fucking them? So you can give a tax break to me and you don't think that that's why the reaction to that is free everything for everybody. The less successful you are, the more society gives you. It's all manipulated to play on the reaction formation to what they're against. None of these people tell you about what they're for. I'm for cutting all these things. He didn't cut shit except for the people who can't punish him. And this guy's not for shit. Free everything. He can't even do half of it himself. It's not going to work like the Green New Deal. Where did that go? Right. Force us onto green energies that aren't efficient, that cost too much, with a power grid that they can't invest in, that can't handle the power. So you want us to drive electric cars that have the electricity made with fossil fuels? A serious. And then the other side. Yeah, so we got to stick with fossil fuels as long as they're keeping us in the best position we can be in. But why do you subsidize them with billions of dollars every year? Why? If they're killing it and we're net exporters and everybody needs it and we're drilling more than ever, why are you subsidizing them? See, it's the remedies. There's nothing wrong with being angry. It's a really effective emotional mechanism as long as it's channeled into something productive. And in politics, that means remedies. See, what these motherfuckers are doing is they're just making you angry. You know, so much of what I understand about how to do my job comes from my personal life of not just growing up in politics and all that, but my personal passion for self defense. And I've had a lot of different teachers. And I keep telling you guys about the spear technique and Tony Blauer, and I want you to look them up for yourself. Because it's so much more than just what to do with your hands. It's about what you do with your head. For instance, when someone's telling me they're going to kick my ass, I'm comfortable. Why? Because if they're talking, we're not fighting. And in my experience, the more someone's talking, the less they're doing. And that has given me an appreciation for a couple of things. One is I'm very comfortable in confrontation. So people want to talk shit about me. They want to say things about me online or even in person. Although that almost never happens. I mean, look, even with Dave Smith, he was not with me. In person, the way he is online. He was respectful in person, right? And then they selectively edited things where he was in high dudgeon and I was listening to him to make it look like he was scolding me. It's not what it was. And he's welcome to his beliefs. I don't like people who want to hurt Dave Smith and punish him for his ideas. No, no, don't do that. Debate the ideas, have better ideas, expose what's wrong with his ideas, but don't make it personal. Don't make it about him wanting to be a bad person. I mean, I know he talks like that about me and says stupid, obnoxious about me, but that's his shtick online. He wouldn't be like that in person. And if he did, maybe I'd give him a payday. I don't know. I, I, I have real questions. What do I mean when I say I'll give him a payday? I don't know. I mean, I'm getting to the stage in my life where I believe that Mike Tyson was probably right. And at some point, what comes out of your mouth may get you punched in the face. Maybe, I don't know, maybe that's what we need. I don't know. I don't like that on one level, but maybe that's what will stop this obnoxious shit and people saying irresponsible things and being gratuitously mean and nasty instead of making points, insults over insights. Maybe if Joe Rogan punched somebody in the face who's saying obnoxious shit on his show? I don't know, maybe he would send a signal to people. Maybe Mike Tyson should have a show where when people say shit that's mean and gratuitous, he fucking knocks them out or something like that. I don't know. I wish we were better than that, but I don't know that we are. I don't know that we are. I mean, I don't know that that makes you more crude or more uncivilized than what the nature of our dialogue is. I mean, is violence more abusive to society in small doses than truth abuse and lying and misinformation and disinformation in huge amounts? Isn't that more destructive? Isn't that more violent? Isn't that more hostile to the democracy than a fair fight? Because there's nothing fair to the extent that that concept exists in this kind of collective cognitive dissonance where you just believe bullshit. You just believe that people who enter the country Illegally are a problem, that they're a criminal nexus. You know what I mean? That people who are poor just happen to be lazy. You know, these kind of collective absurdities, they're just as ugly and hostile and obnoxious and violent to our norms as a punch in the nose, as far as I'm concerned. But I get the anger. See the mistake. It's like one of the classic don'ts when you're in a relationship is to tell somebody who's angry to calm down, relax. An angry kid, an angry spouse. Try that. Doesn't work well. Why? Because people have the right to feel how they feel. There's nothing wrong with being angry. There's plenty of reason to be angry about what's happening in our society today. I got a lot to be angry about in my own life. I can flip the perspective and say, I got a lot to be grateful for in my own life. But that's a choice. And it's also a choice to channel your anger. And I think that you should channel your outrage, your indignation, your anger, not as a weakness, but as a potential motivator to a strong response. But what is the remedy? How do you make things better? See, that's my problem with disruption. That's my case for News Nation, for the podcast for the Chris Cuomo Project. It's not just disruption. It's not just saying, they all lie, they all suck. Listen to me. And then I stoke your anger. It's, can you do it better? Can you be better? News Nation is great because it's disruptive of media norms, because it doesn't pick a side. And it is maddeningly balanced. Right. In an environment where balance is kind of seen as weakness. But that's the right kind of disruption because it's trying to be better. Succeed or fail. We'll see. You only control what you control in a crowded marketplace where people want confirmation bias. They want to be told more of what they already believe. But that's what News Nation is doing is good. What I'm doing at News Nation is good. I don't control all of News Nation. I barely control my own show. But that's the effort. And I'm doing the same thing here. And I get why you'd be angry. I'm angry about that's happened in society. I'm angry about what's happened to other people, other groups. I'm angry about how the media and political culture has treated my own family. I get it. I get it all. And I gotta focus on what's the remedy? How do we get to a better place? Because it seems like we keep getting duped into believing more and more extreme things that don't fix anything. They're like a sugar high at best, but they're just like a false. Like a saccharine. A saccharine diet of things that are real nutrition. So I get that you're angry. I'm angry. What are we going to do about it? And are we going to go for sales pitches and snake oil and bullshit that doesn't make anything better? Look at MAGA through that lens. Look at the mirror. Maga through that lens. What's really being made better? Sure, the border is better, but are these deportations getting us to a better place? Really? Is this bill getting us to a better place? Really? Is a promise of everything free and burn it down and throw out everybody and replace it with people who have extreme thoughts, who've never done anything with their lives? Is that really better? Being angry is not the problem. What you do with it is where we find the problems. Thank you very much for subscribing and following here at the Chris Cuomo Project. Thank you for checking me out at News Nation, 8P and 11P Eastern every weekday night. Thank you for paying to come to the substack so I can take your questions and respond to your comments. If you're a paid subscriber and if you want to wear your independence and show, fuck these parties, you're better than that. Get your free agent gear and we'll use that money to crowdsource contributions we can all be proud of. My friends, problems are real. Let's get after them. Sa.