I Don’t Make Mistakes Anymore. They’re Just Lies (w/ Chris Cuomo) #567

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Fifth Column – “I Don’t Make Mistakes Anymore. They’re Just Lies” (with Chris Cuomo) #567

Date: July 22, 2026
Hosts: Kmele Foster, Michael Moynihan, Matt Welch
Guest: Chris Cuomo

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Overview

This episode of The Fifth Column features a sprawling, candid conversation with journalist and commentator Chris Cuomo (formerly of CNN, now of News Nation and his own “Cuomo” show/podcast). The discussion dives deep into Cuomo’s media career, reflections on the Trump era, the state of American politics, partisanship, trust in media, and the psychological turbulence of public life. The hosts and Cuomo reflect, challenge each other, and interrogate the current and future trajectory of both journalism and the country. The tone is frank, self-reflective, irreverent, and at times darkly comic.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Chris Cuomo’s Media Journey and Philosophy

• Media “Grand Slam”: Cuomo reflects on having worked at all major cable networks (ABC, CNN, Fox for a spell), expressing that while this seems like a distinction, he’d have preferred growing at one place (03:05).
• Leaving ABC for CNN: Recounts leaving ABC due to Jeff Zucker’s move to CNN and the opportunity to cover events more substantively daily, not anticipating the “age of Trump” (04:36).
• Trump Changes Everything: Cuomo describes Trump’s impact on media as seismic — he rewrote coverage rules, moved the center of gravity from policy analysis to spectacle and personality. He rejects simplistic “the media made Trump” takes, arguing coverage was unavoidable:

  “If you could interview Trump, you did. … I don’t think the mistake was the exposure. I think the mistake was … missing what mattered.” (09:52)

2. The Trump Effect on Journalism & Political Culture

a. Celebrity Politics & Missed Signals

• Since his background was in campaign politics, Cuomo claims he had access to “what they say when we’re not around.”
• The real error, in his view, was underestimating Trump’s celebrity cultural cache and the movement’s true depth:

  “Being a celebrity is huge … I missed the depth of the discontent and the desperation to attack the status quo.” (09:57)

b. Covering Demagogues — The New Moral Panic

• Trump supporters, Cuomo says, are fiercely loyal, forgive all failings, and represent a new kind of political force.
• Media’s old standards (objectivity, not revealing votes) are obsolete; transparency is now sought, as viewers want to know biases (19:37).

3. Partisanship and Institutional Collapse

• Cuomo is “anti-partisan” (not nonpartisan)—calling parties “poison”:

  “The parties are poison. They are killing us. … Social media has given it a new tool that magnifies minorities in a way that never was done before.” (19:34)

• Gerrymandering reform and open primaries are necessary, he argues, as duopoly stymies real choice (21:00).

4. The Media Marketplace & Censorship

• Podcasts, talk radio, and new media privilege identity/partisan alignment over ideas.

• Clicks and combat have replaced diversity of thought — with most successful shows/figures being those who pick a “team” (26:29).

• Cuomo remains skeptical of censorship, championing “more speech,” but admits algorithms have created new unsolved dangers for extremism and misinformation:

  “I believe the cure for bad ideas is more ideas … but I am very afraid of censorship, with one caveat that I’m happy to talk about.” (27:15)

5. Trump, Biden, and Asymmetric Accountability

a. Team Sport Journalism

• Cuomo shares a startling moment with Sen. Ron Johnson:

  “I said, how come you’re not curious about [Jared Kushner’s foreign money]? … He said, I’ll tell you why — because you’re curious. This is a team sport. … You don’t investigate your own.” (44:25)

• Host Matt Welch: "That is as close to a ‘Get Matt to vote for Democrats’ pitch as is humanly possible." (44:51)

b. Hunter Biden, Trump Pardons, and Double Standards

• The hosts and Cuomo critique mutual circling of wagons: Hunter Biden’s scandals get minimized, while Trump’s pardons represent a “new standard for corruption” (39:03).

6. The Psychological Toll of Public Life & Cancel Culture

• Cuomo recounts personal trauma from swatting, paparazzi, and losing his CNN job — noting how media personalities become targets, both for criticism and adulation, far more intensely post-2016 (71:42).
• Discusses struggles with personal identity after being “fired,” and how mindfulness, mental health work, and “practice” helped him redefine himself (76:40).

  “You are what you do most often … And this is not the right business, because you sign up for an unfair ass-beating.” (76:44)

7. The Apology Trap & The Loss of Grace

• Apologies, Cuomo says, no longer work in politics — they’re just used as admissions of guilt.

  “The rule of the game is you can’t [admit errors]. Why do you teach your kids to apologize? … Because it ends the conflict. … That doesn’t work in politics. Not right now. We are nowhere near that level of integrity.” (97:16)

• Notable quote:

  “I don’t make mistakes anymore. They’re just lies. I don’t make mistakes. They’re just lies motivated. Anything I say that’s wrong is a lie.” (98:54)

8. Social Media’s Distortive Power

• The group debates regulating social platform algorithms, weighing the value of free speech against the dangers of viral rage and misinformation — Cuomo mostly pro-regulation, hosts more skeptical (62:59).

9. Demagogues, Disruptors, and the Search for the “Real One”

• Trump’s appeal is rooted in disruption, not likability. Voters want “outsiders,” and tolerate appalling flaws as proof they’re not creatures of the political “game” (53:05).

• “They will tolerate things they will not tolerate in you,” Cuomo says, “because the standards that you destroyed, because of how you lied to me. So I get that [Trump]'s a liar in your eyes, but you don’t get to judge it for me.” (56:33)

10. Generational Decline in Politics and Media

• Politics of the Reagan/Cuomo era was combative but less personal; now, it’s total character assassination (117:34).
• The “algorithm” is blamed for creating a perpetual rage-bait environment — something traditional legacy media cannot (legally) compete with.

11. The State of the Nation: Polarization & Prospects

• Cuomo is both fatalistic and cautiously optimistic — suggesting U.S. progress is not a “moral arc” but a jagged, unpredictable line (62:04).
• He’s convinced that, absent structural reform and real civic education, the information environment will continue to get worse — and that more violence may follow (61:45).

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On media tribalism:

  “The only close competition where they seem to agree is, like, which side wants me out more … the left: hate you, turncoat against your party … my father wouldn’t even recognize this party.” (68:31)

• On algorithm-driven rage:

  “There’s nothing else like it in our politics that exists exclusively to deliver you rage bait.” (117:34)

• On apology’s futility in politics:

  “The rule of the game is you can’t [admit errors]. … That doesn’t work in politics. Not right now.” (97:16)

• On pandemic polarization:

  “The pandemic wasn’t big enough [to unite us]. … It became just opportunistic for the sides.” (101:31)

• Funny moments:
  • “Your dog is named Cuomo.” — “All three. Like Foreman. Like George Foreman.” (75:36)
  • Bantering about who could beat whom in a fight: “Joe Rogan would end his life inside of 30 seconds.” (90:03)

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Important Timestamps

• Career overview, cable news, Trump’s rise: 02:56–10:00
• Partisanship and anti-partisan argument: 19:06–23:31
• Team-sport media, Hunter Biden, asymmetrical scrutiny: 44:25–47:05
• Covid, swatting, trauma, and mental health: 71:42–82:00
• Algorithm-driven media and regulation debate: 62:59–66:59
• Defund police, apologies, and political incentives: 93:54–98:53
• Pandemic, polarization, algorithm’s effect: 101:31–103:38
• On apologies: “I don’t make mistakes anymore. They’re just lies.”: 98:54

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Overall Tone and Takeaways

• Candid & self-deprecating: No one shies away from mistakes—Cuomo least of all, admitting personal and professional regrets.
• Darkly witty: The banter (and barbs) over podcast naming, podcasts about “Cuomo”, and who could beat up whom, keep the episode lively.
• Cynical, but searching for meaning: Despite acknowledging growing tribalism, hypocrisy, and algorithmic doom, there’s a sense (especially in Cuomo’s personal reflections) of striving for integrity and honesty, even when unrewarded.
• Reflective of media change: The episode’s meta-narrative is about how the media, and society, have changed — mostly for the worse.

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For Listeners:

If you want to understand why the news feels like a perpetual cage match, why “apologies” are political death sentences, and why Chris Cuomo’s name is on everything he does — this episode delivers a brutally honest, occasionally hilarious, and deeply personal assessment of American media and politics circa 2026.

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Podcast link for further details

Transcript

[Chris Cuomo]

Your show's called Cuomo.

[Matt Welch]

Okay. What's your podcast called?

[Chris Cuomo]

Cuomo.

[Matt Welch]

Yeah.

[Michael Tracey]

It makes things easier.

[Chris Cuomo]

I'm not a creative person. I mean, I'm not. I'm not.

[Michael Tracey]

He knows what he's selling.

[Matt Welch]

If your brother does a podcast, what's he supposed to call it?

[Chris Cuomo]

Nobody cares.

[Michael Tracey]

That's. That's.

[Guest or Producer]

Wow.

[Matt Welch]

It's a good name.

[Guest or Producer]

Wow.

[Chris Cuomo]

Good name. The short guy is what they'll call it.

[Guest or Producer]

Wow.

[Michael Tracey]

So many shots fired.

[Guest or Producer]

We know of new methods of attack. The Trojan horse. The fifth column. Column. Column.

[Michael Tracey]

Chris Cuomo, thank you so much for joining us. It's nice to have you, Fireman. I was sizing you up when I saw you, and I was just checking. I was like, okay, bit taller than me. This is what men do, actually, when we meet each other. You size them up, you look at them. Okay. Little taller than me.

[Matt Welch]

Camille might have Googled your height. We were having a discussion.

[Michael Tracey]

Bit beefy.

[Guest or Producer]

Pause.

[Chris Cuomo]

I'm not sure I could take.

[Michael Tracey]

He said pause. Yeah, that's appropriate. It's a hip hop thing. It's fine. You don't get it, but Mr. Cuomo does.

[Chris Cuomo]

It's a little bit of an inference that you were interested in me in a way that maybe. Oh, really? Is hetero inappropriate?

[Michael Tracey]

Something you said is subtly subjective, so you quickly have to use the word.

[Matt Welch]

Those eyes are dreamy. Let's be honest. We've had Mark Harmon and Chris Cuomo in this chair.

[Michael Tracey]

That's why we don't play pause on this podcast. Because the podcast is at least 10% gay. And we're fine with that. We appreciate that and we embrace it. But Chris Cuomo is. Nice to have you here. You are a large, strapping man. You seem to be in really good shape.

[Chris Cuomo]

I am not gonna hurt you.

[Michael Tracey]

I just want to be sure about that. I want to be sure because this is a place of peace.

[Chris Cuomo]

I could. That is all I do in my spare time is. Is fight. But that's not why I'm here.

[Michael Tracey]

Is this true? Are you fighting in your spare time?

[Chris Cuomo]

Technically, right now, like, two of my coaches just winced. No, because I do self defense, and self defense is not fighting, because fighting has rules, and there are no rules in self defense. It's just survival. They call it combatives, which is a distinction that every time you question it, some coach smacks you around. So you just accept it and you move on and you smacks you around differently.

[Michael Tracey]

But it's been.

[Chris Cuomo]

It's been a great mental training for me for about 15, 20 years because I'm terrible at it. All the cues, the paranoia that you live with. If you're in a kind of hard target state of mind, we don't do in our business, and I don't do by personal inclination. I want people to come up. If you're upset, come up. What is it? These guys do not do that. You know, that's good right there. You're good right there. I told you, you're good right there. Oh, like, you know, that's not our life, you know, and that's not how I am. But it has been great training, great kind of mental understanding. There's some physicality to it in the scenarios and stuff. But I've been doing that for a long time. I don't need to fall down.

[Michael Tracey]

Okay.

[Chris Cuomo]

I'll be 56. You don't need to fall down. I know how to fall down. I try to limit it as much, as much as I can.

[Michael Tracey]

And you said 15 years you've been

[Chris Cuomo]

doing this, this specifically. Yeah, but I've been doing my whole life, I've been doing some kind of. Some type of hard touch.

[Michael Tracey]

Well, it's remarkable you could make time for that because you are. What is it in horse racing or tennis? It's like there's a Triple Crown in horse racing. In tennis you've got the Grand Slam. And. And I suppose you have that because you've worked at pretty much all of the major cable news networks.

[Chris Cuomo]

Yeah. I don't know that that's a sign of distinction. I don't know that it's.

[Matt Welch]

I don't know that it's Wilson and who else?

[Chris Cuomo]

Now, I don't know the trifecta of those. I would love to, and I would still love. I don't think it's a reality of the business or the culture, but I would have loved to have been at just one place. I was never gonna last at Fox. Roger Ailes disagreed with that assessment. He thought I was making a mistake.

[Michael Tracey]

But we know a little something about that.

[Chris Cuomo]

Yeah. And I went to abc. I would have loved to have stayed there, but, you know, you gotta go where the opportunity is. It's just the nature of the business. And now it's more true than ever. Everybody is looking for ways to get reach. And I don't even know that the days of one job are still with us. I think that most people, you know, the reason you don't when you're at a big outlet is that they won't let you. Right. You know, it's like, no, no, no, you belong to us. We pay you. Everything you do is work for, hire you maybe as a guest, if you're doing a book or something like that. But I think that's changing, and I think that's probably good.

[Matt Welch]

When why did you leave abc?

[Chris Cuomo]

I left ABC because of Jeff Zucker going to CNN and having an opportunity to be on TV every day in a way that I felt at the time would be more serious about what was happening in the country than morning TV on the network. I also didn't anticipate that we were coming into the age of Trump when I left, which wound up being a huge opportunity. So that's why. But I did not leave out of Grievance. I loved ABC News. I loved the people there. I worked with giants. You know, it was Peter Jennings, Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, Sam Donaldson, Ted Kopp, Sam, you know, walking around, you know, swapping stories. John Quinones, you know, all of these guys, these legends. It was amazing to grow up around them. My dream, dream for a long time was to be Bob Woodruff's guy, Like, to be his law and justice guy with him as the anchor, you know. And then obviously, he got blown up in Iraq, made the most amazing comeback in history, as far as I'm concerned. The guy is brilliant and beautiful and could beat me in tennis today after getting blown up in Iraq. But you got to go where the opportunity is, so I left. But it's a great place, great shop.

[Michael Tracey]

When did you start at CNN?

[Chris Cuomo]

2012, I think.

[Michael Tracey]

Okay. Okay. So just a little before the beginning of Trump. You referred to it as an opportunity a moment ago. Can you explain that?

[Chris Cuomo]

Well, I mean, we want to, you know, the expression is live in interesting times. You want to cover what matters. I mean, I think to this day, the most compelling part of being in the media is being a witness to history. Unfortunately, a lot of the history we witness is negative. Not always, but a lot of it. And that's tough and taxing, as we all know. But I think it's part of the best part of what we do. So Trump changed the game. Everything changed. What's right, what's wrong, what works, what doesn't work, what's allowed, what's not allowed, everything. So it was a very interesting time to do it.

[Matt Welch]

How do you think you. And then the broader. You, us, everyone did reacting to that. And it strikes me, I work in the minds of opinion journalism, right? So like Reason Magazine, National Review, New Republic and that. And the thing that we, like, had our face smashed into in 2015 and 2016 was like, your little ideological ideas and your thoughts about policies. That's not what's moving the needle here anymore. It caused all of us to rethink our assumption. What did it cause you? Or how do you think that in cable news, let's say, where you had a lot of experience, how do they react to that?

[Chris Cuomo]

You got to remember I'm a misfit toy, right? Because my experience in politics is a dozen campaigns deep before I even get into the media. So I was well versed in what they say when we're not around, because that was my experience. So to this day, most of my relationships and politics span from my personal experience. And it is definitely. I've rarely. Rarely used it, but I have the ability to get just about anybody on either side on the phone, and if I say I'm not gonna say anything, I'm not gonna say anything. And that's important in terms of understanding things that aren't public or public in a different way. The only thing that bothers me about the criticism of how we covered Trump, which is you gave him too much attention, you made him president.

[Michael Tracey]

Right.

[Matt Welch]

It's a common.

[Chris Cuomo]

And that's especially true for me because I was at cnn, and CNN was Zucker, and Zucker put him on tv. And you're the guy who started the whole fire by making this guy a celebrity when he just hit and play on the rallies. The only thing I have problems with about that is, one, we were not the only ones who did that. Two, there is a tendency in our business to where your critics are also your competition, and you get the interview. I don't. And then I beat you up for doing the interview when you know I would have done it if I had had the chance. Now, I don't say that, because why would I? I'm too busy biting you on the ass. But that's the truth. And the truth is that if you could interview Trump, you did. And look, we just saw it. They just agreed multiple different outlets to let him call in, say what he wanted to say about Lindsey Graham and nothing else. And, you know, that's the deal they made, because at least one of the interviews, he said with Jake Tapper, he's like, I'm not gonna talk to you about that. I told you, I'm just talking about this. And Tapper says very politely, right. If not solicitously, well, I hope you come back, because, you know, I have other things I want to ask. I would have never made that deal. In fact, I didn't make that deal can't make that deal with this president.

[Michael Tracey]

Do you not get credit for taking the interview and asking the question you want to ask anyways?

[Chris Cuomo]

Look, you do, but now you broke the deal. So now, I mean, we break deals

[Michael Tracey]

with the interviews, and also, we don't really make the deal. Usually we get the ask and we say.

[Chris Cuomo]

And then we bring you in anyway. So that's. That's the savvy way to do it. Then it's on them. But if you break a deal, you're not going to get a lot of opportunities. And again, you know, one of the problems with the media is they're admitting they make deals. They're deals, and then they're deals. It's not payoff. It's. Listen, I really want to Come on. But I really want to talk about what's happening in the detention centers. I don't want to talk about the latest infrastructure on the wall because it's not that important. And this is. So I'll do it. As long as you want to talk about that. I have no problem with that. I believe that having exposure to something is better than having exposure to nothing for people. So I'm fine with that. But you do got to keep your word, I think. Now, are there plenty of people in our business who don't keep their word? Yes. And do many of us justify it by saying, well, there's a higher thing which is the truth, and that's. Yes. Do I think that that's often bullshit? Yes. So if I could do it over again, would I do it differently? Well, how? I went to the rallies. I checked him all the time. Whenever I would have him on, he would constantly say, I am the worst. He created security situations for me and my kids because his people listen to him in a way I've never seen before. Never. Now, I wasn't alive in the 60s with some of our more charismatic people, but I've never seen somebody who's the people who voted for him hold him blameless for anything. I've never seen anything like it. So I didn't realize that, you know, in the moment. But to go back and do it again, you give up, what do you give them? Less exposure. You don't cover the rallies. You covered Hillary's rallies. Just nobody was there, and they didn't really want you there. You offered her the phone, didn't bring the Raiders interviews. I did it personally. She didn't want them. And then she started to take them. Once he was. I don't think the mistake was the exposure. I Think the mistake was me not to speak for everybody. And I got to adapt sooner than most because of my understanding of him and talking to his guys and covering the rallies. I was missing what mattered. Donald Trump did not create anything, okay, I would argue, ever. But he did not create that movement. He took advantage of it, and he did something that's really tough, even for a demagogue, which is connect with a group of people that you don't have any connection to. If I thought he were a student, I would say, boy, he took a nice page out of Teddy Roosevelt's book, this guy. Because Teddy Roosevelt had that ability to connect to people that he didn't have a shared lived experience with. And that's why he had all those crazy lived experiences. He was trying to diversify his experience. So I missed one. Being a celebrity is huge, which I never saw him that way. I saw him as a character, you know, kind of a local person, you know, kind of deal. But he's a legit or was legit TV star to these people. So he had huge cultural cachet that was not mitigated by the. Yeah, but that anyone who knew him and covered him had because. Well, but he's a celebrity. We don't do that with him. Missed it. 2. Missed the depth of the discontent and the desperation to attack the status quo, which is now funding the reaction, fueling the reaction formation to maga. Right. The reaction formation to it is fueled by the same thing. We have had something that I wouldn't have thought we would have had. Comparing us to the 60s, we had the largest day of protests in American history. We just glossed over it. Why? Because we're consumed with all the Trump chaos. So that even. That just as another comma, you know, in an unending sentence of superlatives.

[Michael Tracey]

Largest day of protest in American history in 2020.

[Chris Cuomo]

You mean the no Kings.

[Michael Tracey]

Oh, no Kings.

[Chris Cuomo]

It was the largest single day of protest in American history that took the crown from the Black Lives Matter stuff. Yeah, it is this. It is the number one. Now, did they organize in a way that BLM didn't? Yes. Did they incorporate a lot of other groups and all that stuff? Yes, but. And by the way, no, you know, in all seriousness, no notable violence, which I was shocked.

[Michael Tracey]

Yeah, yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

If only because, you know, people show up to make you violent. You know, I mean, that anybody who's ever stood in a riot or any situation, that becomes one, you realize how manipulated this is. You got your legit organic folk and their allies fill in the blank of who Those groups are. It depends on the situation. Then you have these people who come in from out of town. Sometimes they wear Guy Fawkes masks. Forget it. White guys with skateboards, Forget it. You see a white guy with a skateboard at any kind of process that has to do with racial justice, that guy's gonna be a problem. It's just about when what is he gonna do? He's gonna take a swing at you. The guys who push you when you're on camera, like those kinds of guys. And you see how manipulated it is and how distinct it is. So if I could go back, I would do that in my entire life. You know how you're not supposed to say that, especially once you have kids. You never say that. You'd go back because then you. I'd go back. I know that regret is an empty emotion. Life has taught me that many times over. I still feel it very deeply. And I would love redos on things. But life has lived going forward. And in our business, you do always get another at bat. There's something else every day.

[Matt Welch]

I was talking to a journalist friend this morning, said we're going to be talking to you later on today. Journalist, you know, consumer of news, not necessarily avid of tv. And the impression was Chris Cuomo during COVID During Trump 1.0 was close to a resistance guy. He was pointing his finger a lot on cnn. He was sort of. He was this character at that time and. And now it feels like he's centrist guy. Is there validity to that? Do you.

[Chris Cuomo]

Times change. Yeah, I'm the same guy. The needs are different. Do you live and learn? Yeah, if you're. If you're making the most of it, you should be trying to change with your experiences. And certainly I have. I've been forced to. But no, my political inclinations are exactly the same. What's different when you bash Trump? There is a reverberation effect that matters to me. Not the assholes who come to my house and say stupid shit to my kids and tempt fate. Not that.

[Matt Welch]

To be clear, that happens or has happened?

[Chris Cuomo]

Oh, it has happened. I've had all of it happen. They just tell me, the security people not to talk about it on tv. But I don't think that they know what they're talking about. To be honest,

[Michael Tracey]

I'm shocked that that's what you asked about. Cause I heard the tempt fate and I heard the murder in his. In his voice. That's.

[Chris Cuomo]

You put it. That's what I put it.

[Matt Welch]

There.

[Chris Cuomo]

You put it. It Wasn't there. You put it there.

[Michael Tracey]

You're right. Self defense.

[Chris Cuomo]

But the, the what, what I, what I learned was that if I had to do something really mean to somebody else, I know exactly what I would do. And the answer is swatting. Swatting works, and I lived it. And let me tell you something, boy, if you want to know how your family feels about what you do for a living, get swatted. And you will see how they feel, and you will think deeply, because I am pretty emotionally shallow, and it certainly affected me. Here's what changed. You go at Trump. There are people who are right about what's wrong who voted for Trump. There are people who are right about things that are wrong in this society. Not the culture warriors, okay? Even the they them stuff, it's all exaggerated and it's picking on a minority group as far as I'm concerned. But systemic, institutional, macroeconomic underemployment, there are these huge structural problems in this country that they were right about. What's wrong? Picking him as an agent, I don't think was a great choice. But I learned that you smack him around, you have to be careful that they don't take it as a sign of disrespect, of their interest. So what I learned is one, he is the Teflon Don, okay? So things that ordinarily would take someone out do not take him out. And that's just how it is. So does it mean that you don't report on them? No, you do, but you got to change the measure because it doesn't get the same resonance that it would if it were somebody else. I mean, look at an Eric Swalwell, you know, I mean, I don't even know which part to compare it to of the things that have been alleged about this president, you know, and he's gone in days.

[Michael Tracey]

It took a while, though, because Eric has had a few controversies and certainly the case that he had something of a reputation for a while.

[Chris Cuomo]

But even that, I mean, you know that I just think we've never seen anybody like him. I think that's what he has an ability to avoid and survive, let's say. So that changed. Am I a centrist? No. I hate the word middle.

[Michael Tracey]

Weak.

[Chris Cuomo]

You know, you don't want to be in the middle of anything. You just get punched twice.

[Matt Welch]

And it's also defining yourself on relative to other people.

[Chris Cuomo]

I am here and I'll do it. That's fine. And I tell you, I think that's changed. You know, back in the day, we used to not Even say who we voted for. We did not say that if we voted, we would not talk about politics so that people would think we were fair. They don't think that anymore. They think if you don't talk about it, you're hiding something. They want transparency. They want to know. And how do you feel about that? That's individual or up to who your outlet is. But I get why they want it, and I think they're right to want it. And I don't think. I think that we have lost the ability to have high ground on it. We have not been fair enough and consistent enough to justify saying we have a standard and this is how we do it. I think we've lost that cachet. I think that we have to rebuild it through the transparency. And it's tricky and it's fraught. But I am anti partisan. I am not nonpartisan, okay? The parties are poison. They are killing us. That is the. You know how when people say to you, if you could wave a wand, you know, if I could wave a wand, there you go. Now if I don't have that big a wand, because there probably isn't a big enough wand to get rid of the parties, even though it should be the easiest thing to get rid of. They're not animals of law. They're not in the Constitution. They're just tradition. And that's the Supreme Court's language, not mine. But everybody in power is in them and it works better. And it's easy to control the game. A duopoly is great in business. You want to duopoly if you can get one. It's just us and them. It's just Coke and Pepsi. It's great. It's great. So I get why they like it. It's just killing us. And we always knew it was going to kill us. And the founding Fathers knew it was going to kill us. And everybody through time has seen it killing us, and now it's killing us. Why? Social media has given it a new tool that magnifies minorities in a way that never was done before. So I am anti partisan, which is different than nonpartisan. I really think these people are the problem and their organizations are the problem. And I think you need a federal law that takes away, supersedes the state's ability to gerrymander. The idea that, well, that's not constitutional. Says who? It's an omission clause that gives them the right. The ninth and tenth amendments are, you know, are redundancy clauses of. If it's not specifically mentioned, then it goes to the state. Yeah, we're specifically mentioning it right now with a federal law that we're going to have a national body that does gerrymandering for the entire country or districting, not gerrymandering, whatever you want to call it. Right. By the way, the guy's name was Gary and we say Jerry. So like I can't get anything right. But the, the idea is you can't do it anymore. And oh, but we can't trust. Whatever. It can't be any worse than this. All right. And the second one is, if you guys are going to run our democracy, you parties when you have no right to run our democracy, but you do because you do the primaries at the state level. And the Supreme Court did say that as clubs you get to pick who your members are. Okay. But country clubs don't decide my exercise of the franchise of vote. So I always felt that that decision was a little janky, but it is what it is. Then I would have a federal rule that says you do what you want to do subject to a top two or top four finish scenario. You have to have one of those standards because otherwise you're just feeding us the most extreme people all the time. That's, that's what you're doing. And it has to change. And I know it's hard, but it has to change. And things are like, you know, after maga, do things get better or worse? I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I don't think the reaction formation to MAGA at this point has the poison in it that MAGA did. That us, them stuff, that xenophobia, that white fright. I don't see it.

[Matt Welch]

You don't feel us, them and dsa.

[Chris Cuomo]

Look, it depends on how you want to analyze it. Because I see what they put out and that is systemic socialistic shift from capitalism to state owned. That's never going to happen. I don't know why they put that out. I don't know why they call themselves that. Because they know that the S is a bad word in American politics. And do they? They're handing a cudgel. Well, you're kind of on the grow right now. You're right. Within their own. Within their own. Not within who they need. Where they have these people is. You're all right about what's wrong. A lot of those MAGA folks used to be Democrats. Used to be union Democrats. You're right about what's wrong and it's well within the realm of capitalism. We make choices. I told my son the other day, you know, he's a budding entrepreneur capitalist, 20 years old. I say to him, you know, I pay the top federal tax rate and I have two companies. Why? Because I'm a small business. If I were a big business, I get a special tax rate. Do you know why? And the answer is, because you hire a lot of people and you're good for communities. So we're giving you the benefit of a public policy where we're going to give you a lower tax rate. Why do you get that tax rate if a disproportionate number of your workers are on food stamps or snap, as we call it now, or on Medicaid? Why do I give you a preferential tax rate if I have to pay for your workers? That's not capitalism. That's just you abusing a preference that was given to you. So why don't you change that rule? Oh, that's socialism. The fuck it is. No, it isn't. No, it isn't. That's the kind of conversation I think we gotta have. You'll never have it in this bipartisan situation. Never.

[Matt Welch]

We were talking before we started about your new True crime podcast, but also

[Chris Cuomo]

the Cuomo Crime Time.

[Matt Welch]

Do you have Cuomo's? In every goddamn name of everything you do?

[Chris Cuomo]

Ye.

[Guest or Producer]

Yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

Cause I'm. What's your show called? I'm the only one. Your show's called Cuomo.

[Matt Welch]

Okay. What's your podcast called?

[Chris Cuomo]

Cuomo.

[Michael Tracey]

Yeah, it makes things easier.

[Chris Cuomo]

I'm not a creative person. I mean, I'm not. I'm not.

[Michael Tracey]

He knows what he's selling.

[Matt Welch]

If your brother does a podcast, what's

[Chris Cuomo]

he supposed to call it? Nobody cares.

[Michael Tracey]

That's not his.

[Matt Welch]

Wow, it's a good name.

[Chris Cuomo]

Wow, good name. The short guy is what they'll call it.

[Guest or Producer]

Wow.

[Michael Tracey]

So many shots fired.

[Matt Welch]

That is rough. But we were talking about that, and you, you were a little pessimistic on the ability to go into a media space talking about politics, which is something that we've been doing here for 10 years.

[Michael Tracey]

Long time.

[Matt Welch]

And not picking a team.

[Chris Cuomo]

Yeah.

[Matt Welch]

Why do you feel that? How do you feel that?

[Chris Cuomo]

Because the commercial exigency is on type. You know, it's exclusively identity. I mean, it's so obvious. If you look at the real kings and queens of clickbait, whether it's Tucker Carlson, most of them are on the right. People on the left are catching up. They're getting better at it. But, you know, part of the mythology of censorship is that the right has been silenced because the mainstream media is all left. They have dominated social media since we started.

[Matt Welch]

They've dominated alt media. Every time there has been a new alternative media at some point, some point very quickly, political conservatives who feel like they've been aced out of liberal media or traditional media, they go there. Understandably so.

[Chris Cuomo]

Right, Yeah. I think they've also been conditioned to believe that anything against what they already believe is a lie and that it makes them seek succor and they find it. That's fine. That's the market space. We're the marketplace of idea. I think Michael John. Michael John had it right. And the more ideas, more better. I'm very afraid of censorship, with one caveat that I'm happy to talk about. But I believe that the cure for bad ideas is more ideas. The cure for bad speech is more speech. Shout it down. You know, there's no freedom of consequence for what you say. I'm really worried that we keep playing with less speech and. Or as the polite people call it now, platforming. Why did you platform that person? You'll probably get asked that about me. Why did you give him a platform? Thankfully, I mean, that's the new way of saying, why don't you censor? Right. They just don't want to say that because it doesn't sound cool. Right, sure. So what do you see? Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson, Benny Johnson, you know, people with no particular portfolio of excellence. Just keep it going.

[Michael Tracey]

Next.

[Chris Cuomo]

Next. Start a fight. Start a fight. You know, find something, twist it, take it out of context. Now go back. Now you can do the other thing because it's completely atheistic in terms of, like, you know, looking at anything mattering as some kind of overarching ideal. It's just clicks. It's just clicks. And now we're in this weird moment where people know it's just about clicks. Bless you. I choked you up.

[Matt Welch]

Yes.

[Chris Cuomo]

You got emotional and I respect this. Clicks. I can't handle it. Just because the pin says you're a man doesn't mean you can't be a man with feelings. Let it out and then tell us.

[Matt Welch]

We're keeping on.

[Chris Cuomo]

Who hurt you, you, Honor?

[Matt Welch]

Where did he touch you?

[Chris Cuomo]

Who hurt you? When was it? And where's his address?

[Michael Tracey]

I just had this tickle in my throat.

[Chris Cuomo]

I was gonna try to stop you. No, I had that tickle, too. Working out till my kid graduated.

[Matt Welch]

I don't know what that.

[Chris Cuomo]

I had this tickle in my throat.

[Matt Welch]

Ah. See?

[Chris Cuomo]

Got me for about five minutes, then it Cleared up.

[Michael Tracey]

Okay, I'm sorry, I totally disrupted the flow there.

[Matt Welch]

I'm going to interrupt the flow and ask, didn't some of that happen in cable news too? I mean, one thing that we used to have, we had a short lived show on Fox Business. But the attempt was, it was called

[Michael Tracey]

the Longer than Some, Shorter than Others.

[Matt Welch]

Longer than Some, Shorter than Others. But the attempt was to have an audience that wasn't predictable in their work.

[Chris Cuomo]

You were ahead of yourself, you were ahead of the curve, but also behind.

[Matt Welch]

I mean, there were places I used to go back and forth across 6th Avenue all the time when we didn't have the show. We'd go to msnbc, go to CNN when it was nearby, and Fox because it was fun, but also because there were a lot of shows on all networks that had some appetite for having dissonance and people with different political views. It just doesn't feel like that's the case.

[Chris Cuomo]

I mean, There's Abby, there's CNN's. They have Abby Phillip, which I think is an accidental forum for scotch innings. Really what bothers me about it is, is it dissonance or is it really. He's allowed to say things that are often untrue and he gets checked. But. But he's good at being insistent about that. And you know, it's on a basis. Forget about the fact that he worked for the, you know, bogus yellow cake Bush administration. Forget about that. This guy, because I sat right next to him, hated Donald Trump, okay? He was Lindsey Graham on caffeine of character immorality, like all that shit that the right used to swing around as the character counts party right. He only changed that of opportunism. So to me it's like disqualifying, you know, you're not a real one. I need a conversion story.

[Matt Welch]

Okay, well, it's the Vice President of the United States. That's, you know, a fair number of people in the United States.

[Chris Cuomo]

I think that's killing them. I think if J.D. vance doesn't pull out of this dive that he's in of, I'm just gonna say shit works for him. You're not him. There is only one, okay? And there will be no Trump in that party after him. There will be no animal like that. My guess, I don't know what happens, but my guess is I have a good feel for what happens with them. They run in the other direction. They run back to the Lord, they run back to character counts. And they say he was the aberration. We had to give the people what they wanted, it was better than the alternative, which is what they say, because they get the benefit of this toxic twosome. Right. So they can always have that in their pocket. Well, that is true. Those people are crazy. I'm not sure why, but I know it's true. And they're going to run back to where they were. And now what do they have on the left? The godless. And they have the Islamists, which they won't use that term. They'll just use Muslims.

[Guest or Producer]

Right.

[Chris Cuomo]

Which is a fundamental problem in our cultural literacy. But now they'll have that, too, which is inimical to Christianity, as far as they know. So that's what they're gonna do. I don't know what the left manifests in the midterms. I think it's hard to know. I think the idea of saying, well, it's dsa, I don't know that. I don't know that it works in enough places for that to be all that they offer. I don't believe in big tent. Big tent is an excuse structure for you not being about anything but convenience and advantage over the other side. You're not a big tent. Neither party has ever been a big tent. It's about what works in the moment and everybody else shutting up. Right. Hakeem Jeffries, you know, we reserve the right to vehemently oppose some of the things that are said, but once the people vote, then there we are. That's leadership. That's a constitutional republic. Or is it a direct democracy or a mobocracy? What is it? That's the fix for him. He's in the fix in that party is dsa us. How do I negotiate this? Or are we gonna have to be something else in a lot of these seats that we have to win or we have a chance to turn for the House? I don't know the answer, but I do love the opportunity to watch it in real time.

[Michael Tracey]

There is. I wonder if we could rewind a little bit, because I sort of want to talk about the Trump effect broadly. I mean, you mentioned you started at CNN kind of just before that moment. We started this podcast around that same time, and when we were talking, before we started recording, you were commenting on the name of the podcast, the Fifth Column, and it's.

[Chris Cuomo]

Love it.

[Michael Tracey]

Bit interesting. Suggests that we are kind of working against the very institution that we are a part of in some respects. And I think that's true.

[Chris Cuomo]

Shadowy, sneaky. It's about sneaky.

[Michael Tracey]

Some scrutiny on the thing. And we're not so Sneaky about it. We're pretty open about it, hence the name. But one of the things that has stood out to me since the beginning of the podcast and really since the beginning of the Trump moment, is the degree to which the change in the media. You commented on the narrative that the media kind of created Trump by giving him so much time and amplification. And that is certainly a broadly held view. I'm not sure I've ever believed it. I think you're right. He was a huge celebrity, global icon that more than anything else, told the story. Giving someone a tremendous amount of attention is not always a recipe for them winning a race. In fact, most of the time it exposes their defects and something bad happens to them. And in his case, he seemed to change the rules, but he did change the media in important ways. And I think in a lot of respects, people became a bit self absorbed. Like we are offering the capital T. Truth. We are the ones who will give you the objective real all the time. And at the same time that they were embracing that, they were also becoming rabidly incurious, it seemed to me. And the sort of skepticism that should have been deployed when the Russian collusion stuff started to come up didn't really materialize. And if you fast forward the tape to 2020 when Covid hits and the Black Lives Matter moment happens, the kinds of things that we were seeing, and I'll speak for myself, I was seeing on television routinely, was everyone knew what the right conclusions were to have the right view of Donald Trump, the appropriate accepted view of Donald Trump, the appropriate expected view of, like racial justice issues, for example. There was only one way to talk about it and the speed with which ranks closed. And as Matt was pointing out earlier, the number of places where, I don't want to use the word heterodox, but independent people who were not clearly members of the kind of Democratic establishment or the Republican Party. It was hard to find places where you could have a conversation. There wasn't an interest in nuance with respect to the Black Lives Matter stuff.

[Chris Cuomo]

Conversation. Cooperation is weakness is weakness in a condition of absolutes. We are not right left. We're not even right wrong. We are good, evil. I'm trying to get us to right wrong at News Nation. This is a place where right and left can come to be reasonable.

[Guest or Producer]

All right?

[Chris Cuomo]

And let's. And I only have members of Congress on with the other party, which is the single most difficult thing I have ever done in almost 30 years in this business. I use more personal things that should be offensive to journalists. Like I'm telling you, next time you're in the city, I'll buy you dinner. Just go on with them. It's not going to be what you think it is. And I'll do whatever it takes because it works almost every time. And they don't hate each other. They don't have to. That's the exigency. But in our climate. Wait a minute. You're telling me that you want to sit down and have a conversation with a Nazi? That's what you want to do, right? Well, no, because I don't think the Trump administration is Nazi. You don't think they're Nazis?

[Guest or Producer]

Yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

What else do you need to see? What else do you need to see?

[Michael Tracey]

But don't you think that that perspective that you are caricaturing there, that seemed to be the dominant ethos in the mainstream media, on msnbc, on cnn, on most of the networks, and Fox News had its own variation on it for some time. And I think part of what I'm hearing when we're talking here is there is certainly a critique of the Trump administration, both Trump administrations and Donald Trump himself, that we subscribe to here at the Fifth Column to speak collectively and that, I think, independently. We all are processing, prosecuting all the time. I mean, Matt just had this glorious feature over at Reason detailing the exceptional corruption of this administration, the way that they have just set a new standard for what is possible in American politics in the worst sort of way.

[Chris Cuomo]

But she's up against a new standard also, which is you have some percentage of your readership. Well, probably not there, but of people who. You want to read it.

[Michael Tracey]

Okay.

[Chris Cuomo]

Once it goes out everywhere where it's over for them, with two words.

[Matt Welch]

Yeah, but this, in this case, not to talk about my work. You brought it up, but it was designed to confront that I went backwards from whataboutism. So I started off with the Mark Rich pardon.

[Chris Cuomo]

Oh, good.

[Matt Welch]

Horrible, like, incredibly disgusting pardon. If you haven't refreshed your memory on it in a long time, spelled it out, and then asked the question, has Trump done objectively, measurably, more corrupt pardons?

[Chris Cuomo]

It's not even a close call.

[Matt Welch]

It's not even a close call.

[Chris Cuomo]

It really isn't. I mean, you know, and I would never think I would say that about the Mark Rich pattern pardon. Because that was a stain.

[Michael Tracey]

Yeah, yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

At the time. He doesn't even talk about it.

[Matt Welch]

No.

[Chris Cuomo]

And that man can explain anything. President Clinton, I mean, he tried to

[Matt Welch]

at the real time. And he gave it up after about a year.

[Chris Cuomo]

And that tells you that's a terrible mistake. Right, but we've never seen anything like this. But that, yeah, butt thing is not going anywhere. It's a fixed piece. But I don't mean to say it works both ways. Cuz I don't see the sides as equal. I've never seen a party consumed by its fringe the way I did with the gop.

[Michael Tracey]

I don't.

[Chris Cuomo]

I don't know if that's gonna happen in the Democratic Party.

[Michael Tracey]

Important. I suppose my own approach is I'm less interested in trying to assess who is worse. Generally speaking, whoever is in power is the entity that I am most concerned with because they have the guns, they're wielding the cudgel. And Democrats and people on the left who had a kind of cultural monopoly for an exceptionally long period of time. And that's somewhat waned in certain respects during that period, particularly in 2020, I think it became pretty palpable. Like the things that you could say and couldn't say. The cultural censoriousness that became a kind of actual censoriousness when Biden was in office and started to tilt the government in a more ideological direction than most people expected because he was supposed to be the moderate guy. I think Matt asked you a question earlier about like, how you saw yourself and you talked, I think in a fairly reasonable and coherent way that seems credible.

[Chris Cuomo]

Thank you.

[Michael Tracey]

About the fact that, you know, I didn't. I don't think I changed, like the circumstances have.

[Chris Cuomo]

No, I know I didn't change. Look, I changed as a person. I just believe that what is helpful to the country, to the dialogue, to what matters to me. I have no sense of grandeur about my role or place. That ended for me when I left cnn. I'll never have a platform like that again. And, you know, to the point of regret. There's nothing else I could have done different there. I could have taken a leave, which I offered to multiple times, but they didn't want me to because I was the number one guy. But also they would have never let me back because once my brother's trajectory was what it was, they would have seen me as a collaborator regardless. And when I was gonna come back, the media would have attacked and said, how can you have him back? But that doesn't matter. So I don't have any sense of grandeur about it. I'm just trying to help and I believe I can because I think that I see the game in a way that is hard to Match because of all the different experiences in time. And I try to apply that to the reasonable. And that's why I'm doing this propaganda stuff of critical thinker, free agent. I'm different, okay? I'm not a partisan. I'm not one of you people. And I think that's really important for people just as much as independent, because remember, the fastest growing part of the population, the electorate, is independent. That's a false metric. They hate the parties, okay? They're just not saying that that much because it's cooler to say it this way. But we're just seeing a sign of change, which is a good sign, but it doesn't mean what we think it means. But it means something, which is fine. But to take it back to your point, I didn't change what I think matters. Changes because where we are right now, the President pardons an admitted felon, Chinese crypto guy who did what they say he did, lets him out. Everybody knows that he set up his sons with a business that's funded through the UAE with money where they use their tokens. Everybody knows nothing on that side. I had a guy to the state of the media. If this had happened at cnn, it would have been national news for at least three minutes. Ron Johnson comes on my show and I'm talking about all the money coming in from the Arab ring and how we don't know how they're going to meet these pledges and we don't know if it's ever going to happen. But we do know that they've given a shit ton of money to Jared Kushner and Witkoffs and this and these and that. And I come to him, Mr. Clean it up, and I say, hey, how come you're not curious about this? Which was wording that I had spent a lot of time on, Believe it or not, because what I wanted to do was hammer him, right, and say, hey, Hunter Biden, boy, what about this? But that doesn't work. So I used the word curious on purpose as bait, and he took it and he said, I'll tell you why I'm not curious. Because you're curious. This is a team sport. And the Democrats didn't go after Hunter Biden and the media didn't either. Not true, but whatever. So they'll investigate this stuff. I have limited resources.

[Matt Welch]

I don't have scrubs.

[Chris Cuomo]

And I said to him, hold on, I want to make sure they're not taking you. Or I don't want you taken out of context when you put the hand and you know, and raise the hand. There's no party in that, Chris. It's a team sport. Okay? You don't investigate your own. What else do you need to hear? What else do you need to hear? And nothing. Nothing.

[Matt Welch]

That is as close to a Get Matt to vote for Democrats pitch as is humanly possible.

[Chris Cuomo]

Right. And he's not wrong, by the way. He told the truth. He wasn't being cynical. He wasn't being mean. He wasn't being reductive. He was just telling you the truth. You do not. Now. Did the Democrats sometimes investigate their own. Yes. Yes, they do. Yes, they do. They are not as bad. Better. I don't know that we're at that place.

[Matt Welch]

Hunter Biden did, in fact, get investigated. And under. He did Democratic administration. His dad cut him some sweetheart deals and then pardoned him.

[Michael Tracey]

But eventually.

[Matt Welch]

But there was an investigation.

[Guest or Producer]

Yeah.

[Michael Tracey]

He was gonna let things play out until it seemed like.

[Chris Cuomo]

Was it investigated the way if you had swapped it to not Hunter Biden and also not an inveterate addict. That was my problem with it, by the way, was people thought I was covering for him. I was friends with his brother.

[Michael Tracey]

Okay.

[Chris Cuomo]

Who would have been a generational leader, by the way. Beau Biden checked every box. He was an extraordinary guy. And I'm not saying that because of how he died. I said it when he was alive all the time. I said it on TV when I would interview him. That, like, this is the guy. Like, I would quit my job and run a campaign for a guy like this. Like this guy. He was an amazing guy. May rest in peace. I don't know, Hunter. I don't. But you don't make fun of somebody's addiction. And addicts do crazy things. I'm not saying that's a justification for the charisma stuff. He was using his daddy's name.

[Matt Welch]

Yeah, the charisma and the China stuff. And look.

[Chris Cuomo]

And it's bad sliding down the pool.

[Matt Welch]

It is kind of funny.

[Chris Cuomo]

Yeah. And that other stuff. See? And to me, they conflated it. Why? That's part of the culture war. You know, you got one side, and it's changing. Because I don't care if you're maga. The idea that you don't have an addict in your family, then you don't know your family. And we're getting a little bit. We're getting a little bit of savvy on this. That like, whoa, addiction's tough, man. It can come at anybody, anytime. You know, so we're evolving a little bit in that Direction. So I was against that with Hunter Biden, but I'm fine with the questions. But the fact that you're not fine with questions that are exponentially more vexing just because the letter makes it better. The D goes to an R. It's not so bad.

[Michael Tracey]

Yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

The R goes to a D. This is everything.

[Michael Tracey]

Yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

Now, do the Democrats have stink on them for the Russia investigation? Yes, they absolutely accelerated this.

[Michael Tracey]

And, I mean, people close ranks around Hunter Biden as well. I'm sure if there are conservatives watching or listening now, they're thinking specifically about, like, the laptop and the suppressed news story, the various things that happened at Twitter before it was taken over by Elon and broadly across Silicon Valley, where there seemed to have been meaningful pressure applied by the federal government to try and get certain sorts of information suppressed. And the same sort of thing was happening during COVID as well.

[Chris Cuomo]

You could use that as pretense. Has happened at every place I've ever worked. The idea of Eric Holder calling and saying, I do not like what you're doing. I do not think you have protection on sources. It is a soft spot in our jurisprudence. True. By the way, there's nothing in the First Amendment about your sources. You know, we all know what it is, but we also have to know what it isn't. They did that. You know, do I think Obama's as bad as Trump? No, I do not. Do I think the administration. No, I do not. I've never seen anything like this. But it's because we've created the conditions to make it okay. This is what happens when you allow the attrition, when you allow the disconnect, when you allow the erosion. This is what happens when you now have a significant part of your country. And the good news is, I think it's changed. I do. I really believe that we are living in times that are gonna be written about for a long, long time after we're gone. And I think about that, by the way, not in seeing myself as a historical figure, but that this really matters. Like what's happening here and how it's back. Yeah, it always matters. It's always the most important election. Not what we're living right now, because we're really figuring out who we are and what we're about right now in ways that I've never seen before in my lifetime. Even the questions that my father dealt with, who was probably the last philosopher king that I know that was in major politics, because he really was a philosopher. I mean, my father, I love philosophy. I did not Live it and study it the way that guy did. He should have been like in a toga, you know what I mean? Like, he was. He was like the real deal.

[Guest or Producer]

And.

[Chris Cuomo]

And you know, there's a documentary out about my father right now called Mario that the Kunhaerts do it and they're a very capable team. And it's fine. It's impossible for me, right, to see anything about my father. But it just raises a really simple question that is complete anathema today's politics. And the question is, what will you say no to? We all know what can make you say yes to something. What leader has said no in recent history who has, you know.

[Matt Welch]

Right, McCain.

[Chris Cuomo]

Right, right. And look what happened to him, by the way. Now, I liked the senator. I liked him. He. He had his edges. There's no question. I forgave them because of what he lived through. He also cost himself an election by being too honest. Do you remember the point in the election when he said before the depth of the economic recession was were known, look, I'm the guy who keeps you safe. I'm not the economy guy, okay? That's not me. And then it was like. And yet there were other things going for Obama having. But it was huge written a book

[Matt Welch]

about McCain during that period. The all of the kind of aftermath public political science of it was he lost in those four weeks about the economy. He had suspended his campaign, which is a stupid idea. Like I'm going to go spend my campaign, then we're to go to Washington until we all figured it out. He wasn't going to figure anything out. That wasn't his strong suit and nothing really happened. But we were experiencing a financial crisis and voters looked at John McCain and Barack Obama, Barack Hussein Obama, sort of novice and said Obama has a much better grasp on the economy.

[Michael Tracey]

The guy who just got here.

[Matt Welch]

The guy who just got here. Well, I mean, he didn't have the stink of the administration who was in its eighth year. Right. So that was helpful too.

[Chris Cuomo]

And that's a big catalyst for change, by the way, that I think is new again, being an outsider. Yeah, I think it's dispositive right now in terms of. Look, I mean, yes, of course New York is a microcosm and it is. It is not a metaphor for the country. It isn't. Not the way it used to be. Espaillatt losing to an upstart by 20 points with young voters. Espaillat is a real one. He's the first undocumented entrant to Become a member of Congress. And he is left. He is left. He speaks very accented English.

[Guest or Producer]

This is.

[Chris Cuomo]

This guy's a lefty. He is a real one Out. Why? You're part of the machine. My brother had a lot going against him, okay? He had a lot going for him. He had a lot going against him. Establishment was more than enough to beat him. More than enough. Yeah, I get it. I get that you did shit when you were in there. I was alive during COVID Yeah. I thought most of it was pretty cool, this nursing home thing. I got to hear about it from you, but. But you're part of the machine, man. We gotta break the machine. I think it's everything right now.

[Guest or Producer]

Look.

[Chris Cuomo]

Look at Platner, you know? Why did the Democrats give him a special dispensation? Why?

[Michael Tracey]

Again and again, they wanted his base.

[Chris Cuomo]

This is what the people want. They want a disruptor from the outside who's flawed. That's not true. They're so desperate that they'll take the flaws. They're not looking for them. They're not looking for the flaws.

[Matt Welch]

Maybe, maybe. I mean, there's always an argument with Donald Trump. A lot of Donald Trump voters saying, well, I don't like that he tweets, but I like him anyways. I've always argued that, like, part of the attraction is the flaws, because the flaws tells the establishment, we don't respect your games. The stuff that you find to be abhorrent is an item in your favor. And I think a little bit of that adheres.

[Chris Cuomo]

I think a little bit. I'll give you correlation. I'm. I'm not there with causation, and here's why. If you say to a Trump voter, you want him to date your mom, you want them to invest your money?

[Matt Welch]

That's a good question.

[Chris Cuomo]

You want them to watch your kids.

[Matt Welch]

What do you put the odds here?

[Chris Cuomo]

Zero.

[Matt Welch]

Zero?

[Chris Cuomo]

No, no, no. Sir. Would you let him in your taking that bed?

[Matt Welch]

Yes, absolutely.

[Michael Tracey]

I'd let him in my golf club, actually.

[Chris Cuomo]

Huh?

[Michael Tracey]

I'd let him in my golf club.

[Matt Welch]

Drum up business.

[Guest or Producer]

Yeah.

[Matt Welch]

Come on.

[Chris Cuomo]

Get emotionalities. I'm saying how these people look over one another when they're making their stupid choices. He would fail those tests, and he did fail those tests. He's a known quantity. You know, talk about people who didn't change. That guy's been the same guy since I put him in my brother's bachelor party video, Okay? I went to his office to interview him because his PR guy at the time was a friend, a very Good friend of my brother's and he was the same then. I think I was like 19 when I talked to him the first time. And he's been the same ever since. He's the same. I investigate him at ABC News. So simple, so narrow. Everything is private.

[Matt Welch]

Right.

[Michael Tracey]

It's nearly a Trumpism. Yeah, yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

How much are you worth? The lawyers at ABC got into this dynamic with him because it wasn't his lawyers. He writes on their letterhead and I can prove it, but he where we can only report it if he agrees with it, cuz it's all private. So I would negotiate with him on the phone. Listen, the New York Times says they have you like 400 million. Oh my. The west side Yards alone are worth 3 billion. Well, but you don't own them. The Chinese really own them and you have the licensing rights and it's a little different. No, we gotta be at least five. You call me back when you were five and I was like looking at Chris Vlasto, the head of investigations at ABC News, a legend in TV journalism and the lawyer, and I was like, seriously, I got to call him back. They were like, well I mean it's all private, so like we got to be careful because he knows. I said, but he's lying. He's clearly lying about it. He just blows up the number. Every time I give him a number, he jumps it. Same guy. What we missed to why I disagree with you on this point is they're not. They don't love him for the flaws a little bit. It means he's not like the other ones, he's more like us, kind of. But I think a lot of what are signature attributes of him you don't want in you or anybody who's close to you. It's that they have to look at those people because they only want people who are disruptors. So it's hard to be a disruptor because most of the people are in the game who want to be in the game. And if they don't want to be in the game, then they're not in the game. You, you, me, we all know great men and women who would be great in public service. They don't want to do it. And we understand why. Partly because of us. So we get it. That's what they want, is the disruption. And they will tolerate things they will not tolerate in you. And they certainly won't tolerate you telling them that this person is unfit.

[Matt Welch]

Right.

[Chris Cuomo]

You don't get to tell me that Donald Trump is unfit because you are unfit. No, but I'm not like him. You're bad enough, man. You're bad enough that I gotta look for something outside. And this is what I have to settle on because of you, because of the standards that you destroyed, because of how you lied to me. So I get that he's a liar in your eyes, but you don't get to judge it for me. Once I hooked into that dynamic, I was very early on, I think he's gonna beat Clinton. I was very early on it won a lot of $1 bets because I saw that this is not a coincidence. He is hooked into something that is very real and very powerful and he's entertaining. Do I find him entertaining? No, I don't. I don't. But I think I take myself and the politics too seriously compared to my viewers Now, I think that's changing. The fear of this guy in this administration on the left is the most authentic that I've seen it. It's not just, can't wait till we get in. We're going to be able to beat him with this. He screwed up on the economy with the tariffs and the war. We're going to beat him. It's not what it is. It is close to existential for a lot of the people that I hear talking about it. That it's not just, I know how I'm going to run this campaign. I know it's that, here we go, this guy is Hitler 2.0. They're doing it. Look what they're doing in the detention centers. They're building concentration camps. That's what it is. That's why they won't let you in, Cuomo. That's why this is it, man. Look what. And everything that happens, they fit right into that. And that I've never seen before. On the left, I've seen it. On the right, I've never seen it.

[Matt Welch]

You think it's more than was in the first term?

[Chris Cuomo]

Oh, yeah, there is. It's what I get hit with. And again, I know that it's social media, and I know that social media is reality prime. You know that it is an offset of it. But it's. How did you have this guy on? Like, they treat everyone like I had a guy with a white hood on tonight. Like to talk about something serious. And we do have rules. I mean, to my one caveat about censorship, we do have standards. I'm not going to have a KKK guy on tonight to talk about why he likes it.

[Matt Welch]

I mean, that's not a free speech issue. That's just a selection, but, you know,

[Chris Cuomo]

look, it winds up getting fuzzy. But the reason I don't do it is because I see nothing of value that. Now you could make that argument about a lot of the people that I have on. You could make that argument about the president. And in fact, members of the media did make that argument and they did something that I think is very easy to criticize, which is not carrying his speech.

[Matt Welch]

Do you think that they should have.

[Chris Cuomo]

Yeah, News Nation. We carried it. And then you test it. You gotta be very careful. Again, we surrendered that agency. We surrendered that. We'll do the thinking for you. Trust us on this.

[Matt Welch]

So even though they did the same thing with Biden at least once when he gave his big democracy speech with a horrible, like, red background, remember that in 2022.

[Michael Tracey]

Similar dark Brandon.

[Matt Welch]

Dark Brandon speech. Obama did an immigration speech in.

[Chris Cuomo]

But it's different, okay? Nobody blackballed Obama, you know, in the media. Nobody blackballed Biden, you know, they didn't

[Matt Welch]

put him in the entertainment section, only in Huffington Post as they did. Right.

[Chris Cuomo]

So this is different. I think it's a mistake. Why? Same reason James Corville does that. This is so easy and this actually matters. You know, this guy. These people want you to not trust your elections. I mean, they, they definitely. Mike Johnson said today. I mean, they're just talking about our elections. Like, we know we have a huge problem in our elections, that we have a huge fraud problem. Like, they, they just assume it and there's absolutely no good basis for it. Oh, what are you talking about? I just saw that there was a clerical error and you had 6,000 non residents registered to vote in New Jersey. Yeah. How do you know that? Because they found them. You see, that's why you don't have. And they're using that waste, fraud and abuse boogeyman, which is always true. Right. Remember what it was called under Reagan and it was called under Bush and Clinton. Everybody. Al Gore ran it. Everybody has their waste, fraud and abuse. And it's definitely there. They are now using it as a proxy that all the programs suck, which we've never seen before. It was about less or more, not none. And I think that it's very extreme. And I think, you know, and I get yelled at for this and I don't understand why exactly. But we will see more violence. We will. There will be more political violence. You can call it terrorism if you want. We will see more domestic terrorism. Why would we not? It's getting more extreme.

[Michael Tracey]

So I'm confused now.

[Chris Cuomo]

Like the guy the other day in front of the immigration.

[Matt Welch]

Yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

You're gonna keep seeing it. Why wouldn't you?

[Michael Tracey]

But a moment ago, not a moment ago, much earlier in the conversation, you seemed to suggest that we were kind of finding our way. There were some notes of optimism, that things are kind of improving in these ways. But now you're saying we're gonna see some more political violence.

[Chris Cuomo]

The trend, What? You know, Dr. King said it beautifully, right?

[Michael Tracey]

The arc, moral arc bends towards justice, right?

[Chris Cuomo]

I don't think it's an arc. I think it's this kind of really ugly, ugly line with lots of different slopes. But I think it takes you to the same net effect, which is, someone asked me the other day, do you believe that America is getting better? I forget how he worded it, but it was a nice gotcha question. Because if you say no, oh, you hate the country. And if you say yes, how can you say that with all this bad shit that's going on? So I think it's much more subtle than that. I think that the more you learn about our history, the more you see that we've always been exactly where we are right now. We have some add ons. Digital media. That's my one caveat. Social media needs regulation. Their algorithms.

[Michael Tracey]

You want Donald Trump to be in

[Chris Cuomo]

charge of social media. No, I know, and that's what kills me. I lose this argument 10 times out of 10. I've lost it with three generations of my family. But I still feel, I still believe it, and here's why. No, I don't want Donald Trump to do anything that I can't see in real time and hopefully.

[Matt Welch]

Stop.

[Chris Cuomo]

That would be. That would. Those would be my parameters. But here's what we know. I'm not talking about your fishing circle. I'm not talking about your knitting community. I'm not talking about your hip hop community. I'm not talking about your whiskey community. I'm not talking about any of those. People find great affiliations and connection on social media. So have I love it in politics. They are feeding you our worst. And we know they are because they said it, okay? They said it in the hearings. They said. Because look, and here's. Once you see one thing, you know how like sometimes once you see one thing, you see, you know, all of a sudden, like everything, you're like Neo in the Matrix and all you see is the code. Why are true crime podcasts doing so well? When I was the anchor of 2020, we had great ratings, but we couldn't sell any advertising.

[Guest or Producer]

Ah.

[Chris Cuomo]

What has changed? They don't know what content they put their advertising next to. They just see the numbers. They just see fifth column. Yeah, I want that. Look at those numbers. A little watch time. Especially with Cuomo. That was great. Very sticky. So I want my number, I want my ad there. Overnight, the economics of crime changed in true crime. You can make a ton of money in true crime now. You could never make it on tv. The advertisers are like, I don't want to go from a pedophile to like, buy my car now. They're all about the clicks. When it comes to politics, the algorithm must be reviewed because the same way reasons publication. The choices that you make get reviewed. The choices that you make. There's a legal standard. I have a legal. They have none. Section 230 of the Internet Act. They're relieved of it. Why? They're not publishers. They are more publishers than your bosses,

[Michael Tracey]

I think that is.

[Chris Cuomo]

They curate more content than they do at reason. They curate the content more than you guys do.

[Michael Tracey]

This is a vector for so much nefariousness.

[Chris Cuomo]

I know.

[Michael Tracey]

And I don't actually think you get rid of the vulnerability by essentially suppressing content that might be able to take advantage of it. You actually just have to allow time for society to develop the cultural antibodies that are necessary to live in a world with social media, to live in a world where people are going to try and kind of game the system. You want a more competitive, dynamic landscape. Your earlier answer about speech and more speech, addressing, driving out the bad speech is actually the right answer here.

[Matt Welch]

In my.

[Chris Cuomo]

In my opinion, I agree with you, but I don't agree with you right now. But you're right. Of course you're right. And that's why there's absolutely no energy towards what I'm talking about.

[Michael Tracey]

There's none.

[Matt Welch]

There's some Section 230 reform on Capitol Hill.

[Chris Cuomo]

Well, yes. Oh, look, Obama brought that up. And by the way, he was right. He was right way back when. But I don't think it's going to happen. And the reason it's not going to happen, I believe is bad. I don't think it's because of your reason, which I think is good and, and. And noble and true and virtuous. Hard. But most real truth is hard. It is hard. Most things in life that matter are hard. And that is part of the curve.

[Matt Welch]

You are right.

[Chris Cuomo]

I just don't like where we are in the curve. And I'm getting a little desperate. I don't have a good panic Gene, I think years and various kinds of traumas kind of take it out of you if you survive that. It's hard for me to be shocked. There's some little part of me that expects the phone to be like, call me right away. And it's like some horrible fucking thing that I don't want to have to deal with. And that's just, like, what life has taught me.

[Guest or Producer]

So.

[Chris Cuomo]

But this has me, like, has me looking over my shoulder, has me looking around. Not that someone's going to hurt me, but that we're hurting ourselves. This is out of our control now. This is out of any semblance of reasonableness. Our politics is just a spit fight. That's all it is. All they do is look at the other one and say, you're worse, you're worse. Or there's no regard for anything reasonable. The economy is the best it's ever been. What? It's the best. It's the best. And that's what he said now. Oh, he also said, I love inflation. No, he didn't. See, we don't have to do that. That's the 34 counts mistake.

[Michael Tracey]

Yeah, right.

[Chris Cuomo]

Okay.

[Michael Tracey]

Yeah, yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

They love that number. I know.

[Guest or Producer]

Why?

[Chris Cuomo]

I'd love it, too. You know, if I were they, I would use it. Also, it's not a real number. 33 different transactions, so all the same universe of transactions. Just different checks. It's just different records. Not that he didn't do anything wrong. He did what they accused him of doing, but he just says things. I like the inflation. No, you don't. He said he liked where it was going, right? Give him the benefit. Now. I do that. Red pill, red pill, red pill. Stop me in the street, vanilla gorilla. Stop me in the street and say to me, red pill. I saw. I saw. What happened. You. They got you. Who the fuck?

[Michael Tracey]

Because you gave me.

[Chris Cuomo]

How did they get me? How am I. They hate me, by the way. You know, the only close competition where they seem to agree is, like, which side wants me out more, you know, because the left hate you. Turn code against your party and all this. I'm like, my father wouldn't even recognize this party. They wouldn't even recognize Chuck Schumer. Chuck Schumer is such an empty vessel from what he was when he was like, Mr. Pothole and Mr. Make a Deal and he was always working it. And now who knows what he is? But here's why I'm so scared. Why don't they have body cameras on? In these last two killings, Democrats shut it Down. Demonstrably false.

[Michael Tracey]

Right?

[Chris Cuomo]

Not a matter of opinion. Demonstrably false. How? In the budget justification, the administration gutted the body cam video. Before doing that, Trump negated Biden's executive order mandating body cams for all federal agents. The Republicans thought it was so whack that they wanted to take 75% of the money and 19 of the 22 staff that they were like, no, no, no, we can't accept that. To Trump, they did this, okay, and they gave 20 million. But they wouldn't give the Democrats the part that goes with it that mandates that you use the money right away and you wear the body cams, Chuck. To give him his best defense. Masks off. Body cams on. Not a great slogan, but that's what he kept saying again and again and again. They wouldn't give it to them. Then they shut it down. So you don't not have body cameras because of the Democrats. The Democrats were actually fighting for the use of the body cameras and wanted mandated. That's the truth. Okay. Democrats do plenty of screwed up things. That ain't one of them. Okay. Demonstrably false. Here's how much the needle moves. When I just said that.

[Matt Welch]

Yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

Nothing didn't used to be like that.

[Matt Welch]

You were referencing Mike Johnson and, and kind of voter fraud discussions. How does Trump's speech 10 days ago, whatever it was, how does that play into your sense hurt the Save act of war. Yeah, absolutely killed the Save act. Probably that and Lisa Murkowski's op ed and the Wall Street Journal kind of took the wind out of it. Are you worried about what Trump might do before the midterms?

[Chris Cuomo]

No, because I don't have that tool in the box. I've had to teach myself not to worry because again, I just lived through too much shit that was scaring the shit out of me on like a second by second basis that I had to develop different personal skills. So I don't really do worry.

[Matt Welch]

You sound like a trumped up traumatized.

[Chris Cuomo]

Yeah, well, because, you know, that's, you know, I've been through a lot of shit and everybody has and I don't, you know, compare, but it changed how I see things.

[Matt Welch]

What's it now? I mean, let's describe the it.

[Chris Cuomo]

Well, I mean there have been many. It's, you know, the idea that, well, I got fired, that is low on my list. How it happened. Having six cars of paparazzi outside my house. I have never seen a member of the Meet Matt Lauer cross the street to tell me he felt bad for me.

[Guest or Producer]

Okay.

[Chris Cuomo]

Wow.

[Matt Welch]

I have never.

[Chris Cuomo]

You're right.

[Matt Welch]

That's traumatized.

[Chris Cuomo]

I have never seen. They were getting, like, 20 grand a pop for pictures of me leaving my house, and I. You know, like, in the moment, it, like, really didn't make any sense. Like, I literally had to run away and go live in Florida for weeks just to give my family a break from me. I'd never seen any. We don't attack ourselves that way. Like, we're not that. We don't make ourselves that important ever. It was bizarre. And then I realized that what I had missed was how big a deal my brother was. And collaterally, I was during COVID Like, I never really captured that, because despite, you know, some people's beliefs, I was sick for a long time, and long. Covid is a very real thing. And it definitely had me processing, like, I don't remember in any detailed way being on TV during the pandemic.

[Matt Welch]

Someone close to you should have told you to shut it down. I'm just saying, to be broadcasting live every day from your basement on it

[Chris Cuomo]

did not help my health. But I'll tell you what it helped my mental health, and to this day. Say what you want about my brother. Say what you want about his choice structure. That's what he signed up for. That kind of scrutiny. I guess I did, too. I have never been thanked for anything that I have done professionally in my life like I was for what I did during the pandemic. It's not even a close call. I can't even tell you what. Second, you got me through the pandemic. You got me through the pandemic. You, your brother, you doing the reporting. I can't tell you how many hundreds of times, okay? And I'm not an exaggerator. Hundreds of times. When I saw that you got it, I was like, holy, I got to pay attention to this. Or I had it when you had it, and I did what you were doing, and it helped. Thank you. You told me I got to move, you know, I didn't want to get it in my lungs, you know? And people don't even know how compromised my lungs were and, like, what we were doing with it. But I wouldn't do it any other way because I was going to be sick. And there's something about how that virus affected me that makes me like a lot of people, by the way, where it just got me. I get it. Every time it's out there, I get it. It doesn't matter what I do, what I take, how it is. I get it. There's something about my immune system and its properties and maybe, maybe it's weakness. That's not what the clinicians say. But maybe to me, just as like a simple man, that I have a susceptibility to it. And it took me down and it still has messed with my histamine response and like, you know what, what I feel on a regular basis. So I didn't get what I meant to people during that period, which of course equalized with how much they wanted to take me down and how much negative pressure there was. So I didn't really understand it, but I came to understand it and come to terms with it and realize what it meant and realize that I have to. You gotta cope. And we all learn these lessons so many different ways with whatever bad stuff happens to you as a kid or to your kids, and losing parents and losing friends, you know, all the things that happen along the way. Yes. Losing a job. Because what I realized is I didn't lose a job. I lost an identity, which I didn't know. I used to tell people all the time, listen, this is what I do. It's not who I am. Yes, it is. Yes, it is.

[Michael Tracey]

That's interesting.

[Matt Welch]

Hence naming every single thing not Cuomo

[Chris Cuomo]

about who I'm talking about.

[Matt Welch]

Your dog is named Cuomo.

[Chris Cuomo]

All three. Like Foreman. Like George Foreman. I name everybody Cuomo. I'm going to call you two guys Cuomo from now on whenever I see.

[Michael Tracey]

It's funny, you know, hearing you talk now, especially about that. I mean, that resonates with me in. In a profound way. And I was listening to you say something recently was from a little while ago, anyways, about like kind of finding yourself and meaning and finding. And I'm trying to remember the phrase, but something about your mind, like kind of regaining control of it and kind of making it an ally. I personally have benefited pretty tremendously from adopting a mindfulness practice. And I think it rescued me from a pretty severe depression that I didn't even realize I was struggling with at the time. And I've heard you describing something and listening back to it today. I thought, huh? I think I. I think I understand the journey he's on a little bit.

[Chris Cuomo]

The key word is practice, right?

[Guest or Producer]

Yeah.

[Michael Tracey]

Yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

Because you are what you do most often, and it's very hard. And this is not the right business because you sign up for an unfair ass beating. You also sign up for people to like you in a way that is not justified. So absolutely.

[Michael Tracey]

And hate you in ways that are not Justified.

[Chris Cuomo]

But you signed up for it. Yeah, and now the problem is my wife did not. My kids did not. Now I can take some solace and be an Italian from Queens and say, but you like the house, though. But you like going to Greece and booking your ticket an hour in advance.

[Matt Welch]

Also, your last name is familiar.

[Chris Cuomo]

It is definitely familiar. Well, that's why I put it on everything. See, I'm naked. Branding, baby. But it is a. This is Thunderdome. This is Thunderdome. And the romanticism of Teddy Roosevelt, talking about being the man in the arena. The part that you miss about that is, yeah, you're right. It's not the critic who counts, but the critic gets to cut you up, man, and you will bleed. And you know when. So when I got fired and it really hit me and I was like, wow, this is. This is huge. Like, in terms of, like, what do I do with this? Like, you know, because, like, structurally, every. Everything was fine. Everybody was healthy. You know, everything's okay. You know, you're not gonna go hungry.

[Guest or Producer]

Yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

You know, Andrew's always going to be okay. Too talented not to be. I was like, what the. What am I doing? Like, what I am. I'm never doing that again. Like that. I'm never letting people set me up like that and put me in that. That's never happening again. And then I realized, oh, you think you control that? Oh, you, you think you control what kind of situation you're in and what happens and that, you know, there's any kind of thing is like, safe or fair. My therapist had a great line, fair. Only four letter word that I. That you use, that you shouldn't use. You know, you live life on life's terms. And once I got into it and decided to try that, I am going to change how I process. And it's not easy and it's not done and I'm not great at it. But it didn't take me down and it enabled. Did take me down. I got back up, I got back in, which I was not going to do. And had I not done this, I couldn't have done it because you can't do what I do and not have an incredibly thick skin. Like, you can't. You're going to die. It's going to take you out. Because the scrutiny is so intense, it's so constant. And remember the switch that we made? The fuck's wrong with me? Remember the switch that we made? Vox populi is now what 500 people say on your story. Now I'm gonna call you and say, hey, a lot of people are kind of pissed off. What? A lot of people? Who? Yeah, who? The 500 people. Yeah, that's who.

[Michael Tracey]

Yeah, 42%.

[Chris Cuomo]

And now the Washington Post is writing a piece on it. Yeah. And that's vox populi. That's some say, all of a sudden. Yeah, we did that. I remember in 2009. I remember when all of us went on Twitter. 2009, boom. Everybody flooded in there and all of a sudden was like, oh, people like me. You know, to your point about that sense of self and grandiosity that we didn't used to have, people probably shouldn't know your names that much. I think on 60 Minutes, they should know everybody's name but the different brand. But I think that we're too into that. And Trump has fed into that. Trump. You would never know who Jim Acosta is. You probably never know who Kaitlan Collins is. Megyn Kelly probably would have never gotten to NBC except for him making it about them, which is a great tool for him, but it's also a great tool for them. The best thing that can happen to you is for the president to say, you're the worst. It's definitely gonna get you more followers

[Matt Welch]

if you have a certain way of converting.

[Chris Cuomo]

Yeah, that's what people are doing. Really?

[Michael Tracey]

Yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

You know, I mean, the Don Lemon, Jim Acosta model of, I'm leaving there, I'm going independent. You know, I hate this guy. So if you hate this guy, I'm here for you. And there is a righteousness to it, because there are things about what we're seeing and hearing that are absolutely contemptible and that aren't easily balanced by. Yeah, well, they do it, too. No, they don't. Nobody else has ever done what we see going on here, just with ICE alone. We've never seen anything like it since. I would argue what we did to the Japanese.

[Matt Welch]

Right.

[Michael Tracey]

I mean, that sounds like a lot, but I think there's a sense in which it is just objectively true.

[Matt Welch]

Yeah. I mean, the only thing that would come close is Operation Wetback, but.

[Guest or Producer]

Yeah.

[Michael Tracey]

And it doesn't make them identical. It just. That is the reality. We've had a particular trajectory with respect to the way the country has dealt with immigration and the level of kind of vitriol. The intensity of the contempt that some people have towards immigrants now is. It's kind of astonishing. That said, there's also, as you were saying earlier, a degree of truth there. For a very long time, we've had a problem with chronic illegal immigration. Which we were not allowed to talk about for a while. We were not allowed to talk about.

[Chris Cuomo]

Which was hard to tear. A proxy for underemployment. That they're a proxy for housing. Look, even that. I mean. So Dallas does a micro study of its own community, which is a border state, about how this massive influx of illegal entrants changed their local housing market. No shit. But how does it get used? See, we were right. See, that's why you can't buy a house. That's completely unreasonable. That's where we are. And you will absolutely believe it. You will absolutely believe it. And that is really hard to deal with. So what do you do? So you pick a side.

[Michael Tracey]

Yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

So you pick a side. And I'm against these people. I'm against them.

[Guest or Producer]

Or.

[Chris Cuomo]

You know what? This is crazy. This guy's just trying to fix this place, okay? You guys broke it. You made her. The borders are talk about the stupidest. Do you remember when that happened? So they were coming after Biden for shelving Harris. Like, why'd you shelve the black woman? You know? So she made a couple of gaffes early on. All of a sudden, you don't hear from her for like, seven months. And people started to give them heat. All of a sudden, she comes up as the border czar. Because they thought, this doesn't matter. Yeah, this idea that, like, you know, now we'll get her. That's not what it was. They were like, we're giving her a title, the czar thing. Work for Trump. Let's try it. And it just wound up being the wrong thing because, boy, did they suck on that issue. Catch and Release is probably the dumbest program of its kind that I've ever dealt with.

[Matt Welch]

It shouldn't be the same name that you give to fish fishing. Just. Yes, the imagery is pretty straight and vivid and.

[Chris Cuomo]

But you know what's weird is that the same people who say to me, hey, man, you shouldn't just dump that bass in the water like that. You know, you really gotta do not have that kind of compassion about the people. Same, same.

[Matt Welch]

Didn't realize you're getting your balls busted for your bass releasing.

[Chris Cuomo]

I get my balls busted for everything.

[Matt Welch]

Yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

And I get told gratuitous, nice things. It's what happens in an extreme environment. And I've never seen it like this. Now you can say, well, that'll be true six months from now, because everything is evolving. I don't think that that's the case. I think that this is unique. I think the tensions are unique. I think that the extremism is unique. I think the political violence is unique. I think the acceptance of it is unique.

[Matt Welch]

Subject we have talked about on this program a time or 300, probably.

[Chris Cuomo]

Well, it's a hard thing, right, because you come to the cognoscenti, and these are reasonable people with texture and fabric to them, who see nuance. And it's why this is such catnip for people who like to think. I don't even think you really have to be a political junkie to love what you guys do. I mean, because, you know, you. You just talk about, like, the vibe of things. That I think is a very compelling. It's not a narrative at all. It's a compelling structure, a really good energy that you guys have with what you do. Appreciate that, but. Right. But I mean, the. The time that we live in, though, is that, hey, man, this is. These are the Nazis and you're one of these. You know, I didn't. They didn't. Nobody came for me, so I didn't say anything. And then there was nobody to come for me. That's. That's who you're being, really. And I get why they feel that way. And that makes it even harder, you know, for someone to say something to me that I believe is exaggerated. But I can't say that because I understand why they don't think it's exaggerated. And they have points, okay? It's not a flat earth thing. It's not where I can just show them they're wrong. You know, it's really hard. It's a really hard time to be anything but passive. And I used to say when I was at CNN and I was really coming to my own, into my own. Oh, I get why people don't do this. I get it. I get why people play it straight. They're not playing it straight. They're playing it safe. And why? Because you don't want to take the beating. You don't want to be targeted. You don't want it to be about you. It's uncomfortable, man. You don't know where you are every day. You know, it's like constant fits and starts. And it's not poor you because you signed up for it, but I get why they don't do it that way. That's not a stupid choice. It's not easy to be Megyn Kelly.

[Matt Welch]

We know that in. In. In person.

[Chris Cuomo]

I mean, she asked for it.

[Matt Welch]

Absolutely.

[Chris Cuomo]

But it's not easy. Not easy to be Tucker, although I think he has it Easier than she does. I've sat down with him a couple of times and he disarmed me.

[Michael Tracey]

Recently?

[Chris Cuomo]

No, but I'm in.

[Michael Tracey]

When was the last time you talked to him?

[Chris Cuomo]

Couple months.

[Michael Tracey]

Yeah,

[Chris Cuomo]

but he doesn't change in polite talk. It's. I think what's interesting about him is, you know how like you always like to meet these big personalities to see how much of it is artifice, you know, like what's the act.

[Matt Welch]

And he's a big recipient of that analysis from people, like what's really going on.

[Chris Cuomo]

But I now think, I used to think, oh man, he's just, he's changed too much. So he's changed too many times. So it's just convenience. Like he used to come after me like crazy when I was at CNN and he was at Fox. I like used to look for him at places because I was like, listen, if I'm going to get in trouble for something, this is the guy it's

[Matt Welch]

going to punch Tucker Carlson at Delphisco,

[Chris Cuomo]

change how he looked. So then it's got a lot of rage when we find out. I don't, I really don't. I have capabilities. Just don't.

[Michael Tracey]

He's just speaking. In a matter of fact, I am.

[Chris Cuomo]

I have capabilities, but I don't have information. Okay. I can, but I won't.

[Matt Welch]

Yes.

[Chris Cuomo]

Okay. Yeah, I shouldn't and I won't. Okay, shouldn't and I won't. I shouldn't anymore.

[Michael Tracey]

Don't call him Fredo.

[Chris Cuomo]

So when we sit down, don't call me Fredo in front of my 9 year old daughter who stopped and called me Fredo too. Now how do you react?

[Michael Tracey]

Yeah.

[Matt Welch]

Can I call you Fredo? Yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

It's going to be a problem. Now. How do you react?

[Michael Tracey]

I mean, I tend to think that I have a degree of self control also.

[Chris Cuomo]

I know what, you're nine year old, that's a problem. Now how are you? Yeah, yeah, I didn't get the benefit of that. Thanks to Mr. Trump, by the way, who said they say my people are violent.

[Guest or Producer]

Look at him.

[Chris Cuomo]

Anyway, he's funny. They, he, he, that's, that's. He can be funny. Yes, but he jokes about the wrong things. Of course. And he demeans.

[Michael Tracey]

Yes.

[Chris Cuomo]

And he always has. Do you know that that guy, when you are uniquely powerful, first time he met Mike Tyson. Okay. Cold blooded killer. Anybody who meets Mike Tyson to this day, when you look in his eyes, he's capable of things you are not.

[Matt Welch]

Okay.

[Michael Tracey]

He says he's also kind of a genius like He's a philosopher and he

[Chris Cuomo]

has a lot of depth and a lot. His one man show is amazing. Look, everybody's got sides, man, you know, and you're not allowed to have sides. Yes, but he does. He says after he meets him, I think I can take him. That's not. That's. That is not a lie. I believe it.

[Matt Welch]

This is where I have. I'm duty bound to. To report that Camille Foster thinks he can beat Joe Rogan at mma.

[Michael Tracey]

Well, I've said that publicly.

[Chris Cuomo]

I've said that publicly and no way.

[Michael Tracey]

I've had some time to think about it.

[Chris Cuomo]

Joe Rogan end his life inside of 30 seconds.

[Michael Tracey]

Yeah, I don't.

[Chris Cuomo]

I don't think that.

[Michael Tracey]

Look, it'd be close is what I'm saying.

[Matt Welch]

No, it'd be close, close.

[Michael Tracey]

Which is a lot for me to admit. Can we just leave it there, okay? I'm a man, after all.

[Chris Cuomo]

You have lost everything that I had built with you this entire conversation. You get lucky. You are not a. You get that lucky.

[Matt Welch]

He missed.

[Chris Cuomo]

He'd have to fall on him. You don't. And that could happen as he fell on him. His eyes would have to go. His fingers would have to go right into Joe's eyeballs, three inches deep.

[Michael Tracey]

Stranger things have happened is what I'm saying. I'm crafty, I'm relentless, and I don't really wanna talk about this anymore.

[Matt Welch]

Yeah, no, cuz you're talking about.

[Chris Cuomo]

Wait, are we talking about you? We're talking about Trump?

[Matt Welch]

Yeah.

[Michael Tracey]

Oh, Trump can't beat Mike Tyson.

[Chris Cuomo]

But, I mean, Trump can't listen. But you know what? There are a lot of people who would believe that he's capable of anything, which is part of the mythology he's put around him.

[Michael Tracey]

I wonder if most MAGA people are actually that gullible. I don't think that they are. I think they appreciate.

[Chris Cuomo]

Oh, it's. I don't think they're gullible. I. Look, some of everybody is something, right? Yes. There are gullible people, there are bigots in there, there are deplorables in there. It's all true. Sure, but it's not all there is. There is a great body of people there that refuse to surrender the high ground of being right about what's wrong. And you want me to say that I was wrong about what's wrong because I voted for him. I'm not giving it to you. Yeah, I was right. I'm more right now. And at least he fights for it. I understand all of that. I do not come to the same rationale or the same conclusion as they. But I get it. I'm not talking about a red hat bigot who believes that illegals are here to rape and kill. I don't feel that way about them. They don't get the difference for me. They don't get the understanding that does. And there are a lot of them and there are a lot of those people who now have reaction formation to that. And they want change and they don't want Democrats, they want disruptors. And if the Democrats don't figure that out, okay, you don't like DSA for all of you. You don't all want to wear that. Okay, you better figure something out that makes you a disruptor of the status quo, otherwise that's all you'll have. And they don't have the alternative to that or the melding of it. They're trying to say that with aoc. I don't think that's fair to her. I think she believes what she believes. I think she's what the kids call a real one.

[Michael Tracey]

She's moderating now actively.

[Matt Welch]

She's being more savage.

[Chris Cuomo]

She's growing up and realizing she is in a system where she has achieved nothing. She's a huge following, right, because of this new social media animal that she never would have had before. She probably would have been out by now if not for social media because she can raise money because of that reach. But she's realizing I don't get anything done. I mean, I say things and that matters. Words matter. She fights for things. She gets some good moments in those hearings every once in a while. She's well prepped. Big pharma, you know, big thing. But I'm not changing anything. Nothing's changing. So that's what I see. And she is widening the appeal because look, what is she smart enough to know? I'm polarizing. They're using me as an extremist. I'm not an extremist. What I want, I want for like everyone in this country, not for one set. And that's what I see in the. Is it an adjustment? Yeah, but they're always doing that.

[Michael Tracey]

I suppose I would take it more seriously if she candidly acknowledged her errors. The miscalibration early on, I mean, during 2020, like she was on television defending Defund the police. And the videos that you would see specifically like the Instagrams where she was Instagram live streams where she was a little less guarded. The actual script was Defund the police is where the conversation is if you are uncomfortable with that, maybe you're the problem. And she says this directly in response to Barack Obama saying, that is a slogan that makes people uncomfortable. It is not going to be a winner. She was at the forefront of that.

[Chris Cuomo]

Yes.

[Michael Tracey]

She ran to the head of that parade as quickly as she could. And that was a huge mistake. So when she says, now, I'm not a radical, I'm working class, this is

[Chris Cuomo]

like, eh, Remind me the last example of an apology in politics that worked.

[Matt Welch]

Yeah, I was gonna go there.

[Chris Cuomo]

You people kill someone when they apologize.

[Michael Tracey]

Not me. Not me.

[Matt Welch]

That's true.

[Chris Cuomo]

All of us. You have to own all of us. Just like I do. Just like he does.

[Michael Tracey]

No, never.

[Chris Cuomo]

You have to.

[Michael Tracey]

No, singular.

[Chris Cuomo]

To everybody else, but to all of them.

[Michael Tracey]

They know I'm different.

[Matt Welch]

I don't know.

[Chris Cuomo]

I do have a T shirt that says that though. I'm gonna send it to you.

[Michael Tracey]

Thank you.

[Chris Cuomo]

And you should endeavor to be different. But it's not easy to differentiate yourself within the media. I concur. It's why media criticism doesn't really ever work. First of all, why would you go into journalism to talk about other people, People's work. To me it's like, defeats the purpose. But I don't do a lot of that because people are like. Like, they'll call it a cat fight or some stupid shit like that where you know you're in it. How can you criticize it when anyone who's in it knows. No, there's plenty of stuff to criticize. Very few people are doing things the same way and they're doing it for different reasons and they have different agendas and they. They have different motivations and. But that's lost on people. And I get it. That's another thing that you sign up for and that you have to understand. But I know what's working. I just don't wanna do it. But I could definitely tell someone how to grow their independent media business.

[Michael Tracey]

No, I concur with that.

[Chris Cuomo]

And I'll tell you what, it's gotta be better advice than aoc. You should apologize for what you used to say, because that is a death sentence.

[Michael Tracey]

I'm not prescribing what she ought to do to be successful at all.

[Matt Welch]

It sounded like a prescription.

[Michael Tracey]

I am making a declaration about my own. What Camille wants of her as a person. And whether or not I can actually say, yeah, this seems like an authentic. An authentic.

[Chris Cuomo]

So then what you do is you wait for Camille to get you at the table.

[Guest or Producer]

Yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

And say to you. But she should show up. I watched your live.

[Guest or Producer]

Yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

And you said, yeah, I'm in a different place.

[Michael Tracey]

She should show up and explain.

[Chris Cuomo]

But do you apologize, Camille? Do you apologize for every stupid thing you've ever done? No, he doesn't.

[Michael Tracey]

It is important, but the accounting for is really.

[Chris Cuomo]

It's the same thing. The rule of the game is you can't.

[Matt Welch]

You.

[Chris Cuomo]

You can't do that. You're asking her to do this.

[Michael Tracey]

No, no. And accounting. I think that that is something that plenty of voters would respect.

[Chris Cuomo]

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know that they're the ones you want. If you're in her position.

[Matt Welch]

And we're still just in the post apology era.

[Chris Cuomo]

Look, why do you teach your kids to apologize? Why, when you have a good friend, do you want the apology?

[Michael Tracey]

I teach. I teach my children integrity. I don't know that I teach them to apologize. I think you apologize at the appropriate interval. But not everything demands.

[Chris Cuomo]

But when one hits the other one.

[Michael Tracey]

But yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

And you say you saw it. Why? Because it ends the conflict. If it's in good faith. Because you believe that there's something more to the two of you as sister, sister, brother, sister, brother, brother, whatever it is.

[Michael Tracey]

And it depends on how it's received. And all that other stuff, too.

[Matt Welch]

Yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

And by the way, an apology is not about an acceptance of an apology. An apology is a choice that you make of what you want to say because that's how you feel. The Jews have a very interesting bromide on this. You ask for forgiveness three times. If they do not forgive you after the third time, you forgive them. Because that is what you're doing. You're creating your own standard.

[Guest or Producer]

Yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

Look, what I did was wrong. I shouldn't have done it. Yeah, sorry. I'll try to not do it again. I don't know that I can guarantee, but I'll try. And if I'm not trying, that's on me. Let me know that's all you can do. He's still mad. He's still not returning my texts. All right. Just be with it. Be ready and be waiting if he gives you another chance. Want a friend, be a friend. But that's the best you can do. That doesn't work in politics. Not right now. We do. We are nowhere near that level of integrity. You know, I mean. I mean, it happens to me all the time. Everyone I make, you know, on live tv, live radio. You make mistakes, okay?

[Michael Tracey]

Oh, for sure.

[Chris Cuomo]

I don't make mistakes anymore. They're just lies. I don't make mistakes. They're just lies motivated. Anything I say that's wrong is a lie.

[Michael Tracey]

Yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

And you know, you lie and everything's a lie. You lied about the vaccine. How? How did I lie about the vaccine? Well, you know, you told people to take it. I said no. I told you the government was telling you to take it. And if you don't take it, don't expect to be able to go everywhere, that the people who get to go places because they took it go. That's unreasonable. They make the rules. Okay? And that's what it was. Now do I look at it? Do I have questions about the vaccine? Yes. Do I know things that I didn't know then? Yeah, kind of. Kind of. I had Ron Johnson on. He says they knew the vaccine was doing all these crazy things. They knew from the VAERS accounts. VAERS accounts are unverified.

[Matt Welch]

Oh.

[Chris Cuomo]

But they come from clinicians. They don't come from clinicians who have investigated the claim. They just know that this guy had this happen after he had the vaccine. Correlation is not causation. So vaers, that's never been used as a basis for anything. But he says it. He holds the hearings and he says they use the wrong data mining and they did it on purpose and they did this and they did that. I heard about it for days. I debunked it with two scientists. The next show nothing. That's where we are. That's what is so scary to me and makes me make my little carve out from your wisdom about the marketplace of ideas is the truth is losing. And I know a lie gets half way around the world before the truth has put its pants on in the morning. I know, I know that. That is from the pamphlet days. I get it. But holy cow, lies work so much better than the truth in our politics.

[Matt Welch]

It could be a human problem more than an algorithm.

[Michael Tracey]

Probably. I think. I think that's the case.

[Matt Welch]

Yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

Well, you're probably right because of something that changes that dynamic, which is an immutable massive crisis. And I say massive because the pandemic wasn't big enough. It only worked until we stopped banging on the pans. As soon as we stopped banging on the pans every night at seven for the first responders, you know, the people who remember we were doing that, banging on the pan. I thought that was so beautiful. Like I was like, wow.

[Matt Welch]

And also desperate. I mean, we were insane.

[Chris Cuomo]

Yeah, yeah, especially.

[Matt Welch]

But like everybody we were scared was an insane person. It was the only time we'd see Our neighbors. Yeah. You were scared, I think.

[Michael Tracey]

I think we're still. We're still pretty fucked up.

[Chris Cuomo]

Let me tell you that when I went to Brooklyn the first time I went to the hospital, and there was a container outside with bodies in it. I'd never seen that here before. Not. Not for something like that.

[Michael Tracey]

Yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

I mean, not even really natural things. Rare that you have that concentration of death in a place where that's how they have to store the bodies. I've seen in Haiti without the refrigeration, but I. I've never seen it here. It was scary, and they didn't know, and the unknown is very scary, but that wasn't big enough to transcend. And in fact, it became just opportunistic for the sides. First, it was the left beating up on how badly Trump managed it.

[Matt Welch]

And Desantis.

[Chris Cuomo]

Death.

[Matt Welch]

Santis.

[Chris Cuomo]

Yep. And Kamala Harris. I'm not taking a vaccine that that guy did.

[Matt Welch]

That's right.

[Chris Cuomo]

And the right saying Operation Warp speed was the best thing since the printing press and then.

[Matt Welch]

Right.

[Chris Cuomo]

I mean, it got to the point where Donald Trump's voters really believe that the pandemic doesn't count for his economic analysis, but it does for Joe Biden's. Something that doesn't get you out of second grade. Why? Because there's no cognitive dissonance. There is no more feeling in the pit of the stomach that what you're saying right now, you know, is, you know that this is not what you're about. That's not there anymore. It's been replaced by something else. What? Fear. Fear of the other. Fear of them. They want to cut your dick off. That's what they want. And they believe it. Now. That's crazy. They'll look at him and say, this is going to end in a holocaust. This is going to end in a holocaust. And 50 articles will come your way with little snippets of things that are happening that are really scary. And absolutely fit into that framework. Absolutely fit into this framework. To me, what is the common factor? The algorithm. The algorithm is putting that in places and in ways that you cannot compete with.

[Michael Tracey]

It's just. We've had actual Holocaust, and we didn't have the algorithm back then. We just had the narratives, and we just had people. And I think that the capacity, the, like, the probability that things could go badly very quickly is always there. And I think we learned that lesson during COVID in a way that most of us were not prepared for. And it's interesting, as we're talking, the thing That I keep thinking about, and I've come back to 2020 quite a bit, is. I'm not sure you see it, but from my vantage point, living through that time, the radicalism I was seeing from the political left, who was not even in power at that point, was kind of extraordinary. The stuff that was happening during that summer was extraordinary. The things that people were willing to justify. The fiery but mostly peaceful protests on CNN was extraordinary. I was living in my mother in law's house with my family. We'd left our home in New York City. I was not sure when we would come back. And the narratives I was hearing from mainstream media were beyond belief. And the radical ideas that people were bracing, embracing, seemingly overnight. We have to get rid of the police. We need to abolish. Not abolish, but fundamentally transform the Constitution for racial justice. It was astonishing to see that sort of stuff show up in Politico and plenty of people not bat an eye at what was happening. I appreciate the concern with respect to Donald Trump and all of the excesses of this administration. They are exceptional and they demand our attention. I don't know that we've really reconciled with ourselves about just how insane things got from the other side and the degree to which it contributed to just how nuts things are.

[Chris Cuomo]

That part is the part that they don't want to own. Yeah, nothing happens in a vacuum. Look, you don't get Trump without Obama. White fright was a thing. You know, they didn't want to say it because, you know, they just say it in quiet places where you don't get fired for it. But he represented something that was beautiful for some people and frightening for other people and not just as simple as a black man being president. It was why they wanted a black man to be president and what that represented as an agenda that they believe in. The replacement theory on the right about the House.

[Michael Tracey]

I don't know how important that was. I'm not sure I've seen.

[Chris Cuomo]

I don't think what I'm saying is a major thing. What I'm saying is, let's say it isn't. But I don't think you have Trump without it. Because that kind of anger and need for retribution and payback, where'd that come from?

[Matt Welch]

And also creative explanations from where Obama came from, that was part of the rise of Trump then.

[Chris Cuomo]

I mean, nobody's ever said that guy's middle name. You know, I bet you Obama's mother didn't say his middle name as often as Donald Trump does.

[Michael Tracey]

But he won two elections and Donald Trump managed to secure plenty of Obama voters. I think that the commonality there is actually that they are outsiders. And I continue to think that with both of Trump's wins, it was less a matter of the most awful things that he stood for that would end those races and more a matter of. Of the opportunities that most people imagine they perceived in him.

[Chris Cuomo]

I think the populism, 100% has more

[Michael Tracey]

to do with his victories.

[Chris Cuomo]

I think you're 100% right.

[Michael Tracey]

Perceived racism.

[Chris Cuomo]

I agree with what you're saying 100%, and it is very well said, and I'm going to use it.

[Michael Tracey]

Good.

[Chris Cuomo]

But what he is doing and benefiting from now is not that anymore, because he lost that connection to the economy.

[Michael Tracey]

I'd say that's true.

[Guest or Producer]

Yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

And that was his thing. Even if you wanna believe it was false and that he's never been a good businessman. And how could he get 55% approval of people for the economy when he doesn't know what he's talking about? I get it. But he does and now he doesn't.

[Michael Tracey]

Well, that's why I don't flinch when you use the word demagogue. I hear it, and it's just clinical. Like, this is a fair description of the role he's playing in our politics.

[Chris Cuomo]

He is a demagogue, and I'll tell you, it works. How do we know what's the positive opposite for demagogue? I have no idea. I'm sure the Greeks gave us a word for it. I don't know what it is. Why? Because it's not a thing.

[Michael Tracey]

I'm sure Claude would figure it out for us.

[Chris Cuomo]

But I'm saying we don't know. And we're in the words business because nobody's ever won by, like, hugging everybody. You know what I mean?

[Matt Welch]

Like this Clinton tried.

[Chris Cuomo]

He tried to feed. Did he try empathy? Did he try empathy in a saxophone and underwear?

[Michael Tracey]

All right, Matt, you're trying to be responsible.

[Matt Welch]

Someone's got to be responsible here. My segue will just be that in addition to the economy, the thing that Trump is no longer being successful at demagoguing, or at least getting himself popular, is the war, which is ongoing. So every week we've been doing that

[Chris Cuomo]

graphic jump the gun a little bit there. Can we play?

[Matt Welch]

Just play it again. Because it's just like five seconds is too short. Go. This is great. No, we've been using in this segment, and my God, I'm having to use a Mac sponsored by polymarket to look and see if there's Anything useful with prediction markets in looking at things like.

[Chris Cuomo]

Love them, by the way. Do you love them?

[Matt Welch]

How do you use them?

[Chris Cuomo]

Love them. I think they're great people. Putting money on something is an investment. You know what I mean? So it's a little bit different more than just stopping them on the street. Do you think that. You know what I mean? Like that. That to me is like very low this. They're putting money where their mouth is and there's something to that. And I think it's directional of our politics anyway. I think somebody's got to do around the horn, you know, remember, you know

[Michael Tracey]

the show Tony Cohn has a politics. Oh, that's not.

[Chris Cuomo]

And like, you know, Abby Phillips should be scoring it every night.

[Matt Welch]

Why not?

[Chris Cuomo]

It's all competitive banter. You know, they don't even believe half the things they're saying. They're just. They're just pointing, counterpoint, pointing counter sleeves.

[Michael Tracey]

This is actually true.

[Chris Cuomo]

So why not just score it? But anyway, I love this. And it also goes to our bigger conversation. How do the Republicans keep the Senate other than how screwed up it is that you have disproportionate representation thanks to the electoral college.

[Matt Welch]

Yeah. And lopsided.

[Chris Cuomo]

But why aren't the Democrats kicking their ass everywhere? Part of it is DSA phobia and part of it is they haven't connected yet with the mass mentality of this will be better. They haven't gotten there yet. They are where they are based on. This has got to change. This guy. And this has got to change. But to what? They haven't connected to that yet. They are in the. Anything's better than this. Not according to this.

[Matt Welch]

So this we're looking at a poly market spread on the question of which party will win the Senate in 2026. So this isn't necessarily. The numbers aren't going to be what we think that the division is going to be in the Senate, which right now is 53, 47 Republican. This is just. Is there going to be a majority one way or the other? It's currently at 56 Republican, 44% Democrat. But what I find interesting about this is that beginning of the year, 75, 25 basically. All right, what changed?

[Michael Tracey]

It was actually November.

[Matt Welch]

That was back in November. What changed is that right around March, this is when the lines got into each other. And what happened in March? The war happened in March and that changed the fortunes. The war right now was seeing a thing with our friend Harry Anson on CNN earlier today. The war at this stage is more unpopular than the Iraq war was within three years. Like we haven't seen a war go this pear shaped in public opinion it's down 45 percentage points or something like that. Among independents it's underwater by 70 percentage points.

[Chris Cuomo]

But the chance they keep the Senate went up.

[Matt Welch]

The chance to keep the Senate has gone up recently because what happened the war I think has much to do with anything else. The war kind of stopped at some point. It's kind of going on again. So that'll be the interesting thing to watch as we go on.

[Chris Cuomo]

How much of it is do you think or am I2 in the weeds that people are coming to be more comfortable that the Democrats are gonna get the House and they want balanced power. Do you think that could be part of it or.

[Matt Welch]

No, that could be part of it. Although I mean you vote locally so it's.

[Michael Tracey]

Yeah, I don't know that that's animating very well.

[Matt Welch]

There was a pretty good piece and sort of session at the New York Times last week where they convened six pollsters, Nate Silver and five others to give their ideas about what's going to happen next. And all of them thought concluded that Democrats are going to take the house, which at Polymarket I think it's at 87% or something. It's pretty high. And all of them were that it's that Democrats are not going to take the Senate, that it's going to be either even or Republicans up by one. So it's really super close right now.

[Chris Cuomo]

Do you think they should get rid of the filibuster?

[Matt Welch]

No, no, no. I'm in favor of things that grind the gears.

[Michael Tracey]

Yes.

[Matt Welch]

And slow things down. I don't want it to be a parliamentary country. I don't like the two party system. I constantly vote for third parties and independents. I've never voted for a presidential candidate who won. And pursuant to what you were saying earlier about disclosing, I just want to pat myself on the back and say that at reason, beginning in 2004 when I was just like a schlub at Reason, I convinced them to pre the election say who you're voting for, including like fuck you. I'm not telling you that's an option too. And we've been doing that since 2004. It is still such a lonely tried to do it the LA Times, they wouldn't have it at the editorial board.

[Chris Cuomo]

Do you remember your first vote?

[Michael Tracey]

My first vote? Yeah.

[Matt Welch]

It's gonna be Ron Paul, isn't it?

[Michael Tracey]

No, no, it was John Kerry.

[Chris Cuomo]

God, that.

[Michael Tracey]

That's yeah.

[Matt Welch]

That's grim.

[Michael Tracey]

Maybe he gave him money.

[Matt Welch]

Really?

[Michael Tracey]

Yeah.

[Matt Welch]

What was yours?

[Chris Cuomo]

1988.

[Matt Welch]

Me too.

[Chris Cuomo]

First election. George Bush over Dukakis.

[Matt Welch]

Yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

Why? I think one, I was at Yale so a little bit of it was an affinity play because I was in like bula bula.

[Matt Welch]

It's so weird for someone who went to Yale to say that they went to Yale. I've never experienced that before.

[Chris Cuomo]

I'm not the guy.

[Michael Tracey]

It came up two hours into the conversation.

[Chris Cuomo]

That's true. That is true. I can't tell you how many parents I have made upset at me by telling their kids why don't be so stressed. You do not have to go to an Ivy League college.

[Michael Tracey]

Amen.

[Chris Cuomo]

You don't even have to go to college. I just said to my son's buddy now, I said, soon as you're finished with. He left college, you know, wasn't for him. He's getting his trade certificate in elect being an electrician.

[Matt Welch]

Awesome.

[Chris Cuomo]

Not only is he going to immediately be a six figure guy because he's smart and he's doing well in there. I said, when you're ready to buy the sprinter vans and start getting teams because they're entrepreneurs, it's the only AI proof stuff that we have. Let me know. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in.

[Michael Tracey]

Cuomo Electrical.

[Chris Cuomo]

Well, it's got to be called Cuomo and no electrical. It's confusing. It's just great. And I'll give you like a lightning bolt.

[Matt Welch]

Yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

So I voted for him in part because I was there, but also because I think it bothered me that Dukakis, in my mind, good man, always kind to me, always, I thought very smart, was a lesser version of my father to me. To me. And my father would smack me if he were here right now because he one would never accrantize himself. He was like pathologically humble. But that's how I saw Duke and. And it bothered me, the helmet thing, it bothered me. That image worked on me. Willie Horton didn't work. Willie Horton almost made me not vote for Bush because where I come from and how I was raised, I knew exactly what that was about. And that did not work for me. They darkened that guy up and they made him look menacing to play on white fright, just like we see in this administration sometimes. But I did. That was my first vote.

[Matt Welch]

That was my first vote. And I voted for Dukakis. And I regretted it so hard ever since because of the helmet and the eyebrows.

[Chris Cuomo]

Too aggressive. Just frankly they were. Although now that's in.

[Matt Welch]

If he just brushed them up, it's self hatred. I kind of have the unibrow. If it's not. It's not taken care of. No, I like. Because I talked myself into believing, as a lot of us college students did back then, that George H.W. bush was the real villain. Like, you know, Reagan, he's a stupid old man. Which we were wrong about. But, like, because H.W. had been the head of the CIA, like, total deep state. Or he's going to unleash the real horrible things, which, in retrospect.

[Chris Cuomo]

But the invective is what has changed the broth. Like, my father made his name going at Ronald Reagan. Okay? No one can say.

[Michael Tracey]

Yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

Do you remember when Cuomo called Reagan. You can't finish the sentence. You can't finish the sentence. Why? It was different, okay? He said all kinds of things that were destructive to Reagan's political ideas and his agenda and all kinds of attacks on, you know, you don't care about poor people. And this is a Tale of Two Cities. And, you know, all this beautiful imagery and stuff about his own immigrant experience. But he never said, the guy's a bum. Never. That's changed.

[Michael Tracey]

Yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

Now, I don't really know why you're different policy wise, but I know you think that he's a bum. That I get. And I think it matters. And I think it's all right. Back to maybe a devolution, maybe humanity, you know, or. And the algorithm. There's nothing else like it in our politics that exists exclusively to deliver you rage bait. You can't do that at Reason. I can't do that at News Nation. I can't do it at sxm. Someone's getting a phone call, okay? If I go on the radio tomorrow morning, if I go on tonight and I say, this guy, man, this guy. Somebody's just gotta, you know, and then say some horrible.

[Michael Tracey]

Okay.

[Chris Cuomo]

I'm getting phone calls. I'm getting them from my boss. I'm probably getting them from someone in the government, and not without cause. Okay. Why? It's not over the air. Please. They have plenty of reach. And I don't know that that's wrong, by the way. I don't know that that's a bad thing. I don't know that having bosses is a bad thing, by the way. I think accountability is something. You can say whatever you want. Both Ms. Ford and Mr. Lemon were journalists when they were covering that story in Minnesota. They are journalists. The arrest was a bad arrest. However, I do not believe that standing in that parking lot, talking to somebody at CNN or at ABC or at News Nation, you go in that church. I do not think you do that.

[Michael Tracey]

I think that's right, because you have

[Chris Cuomo]

someone like you or like you who's like, well, no, no, no, don't go. When they go in there to bust up the service.

[Matt Welch]

Yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

Get them why they're doing it and then get them once they do it. Don't go commit the crime. Don't do that.

[Matt Welch]

And don't suppress information about it right

[Chris Cuomo]

before they do it. Yeah. So I don't think that happens. Independent media, it's all that happens. Surely you don't get that stuff on air, but most of the stuff he's put out, you don't get on air the way he put it out, you'll get it on. It's true. There's truth to it. But the degree is everything. And that's hard in the new world.

[Matt Welch]

But independence can also be responsibility and should be.

[Michael Tracey]

That's true, too.

[Chris Cuomo]

Matt Taibbi, I think, is a strong guy. I think Herridge has done some good work. I think, look, you guys are a great idea of the Salon Effect, which is really important. Chewing on ideas and important. The reporting is going to come, you know, the facts are going to be events. At some point, we're going to know what the universe of possibility is. What does it mean? You guys are big. Why guys. And I and am very hungry for that. So that's why I came on.

[Matt Welch]

By the way, thank you. And thank you for. Wow. This is a good, good stretch of one, too. So this is.

[Chris Cuomo]

I didn't want you to say that. I ran out because you were gonna say this or you were going to ask that. I've learned that lesson. That guy had to get out of here because I was about to drop a hammer on. We don't do that. So I just sat here. The whole fucking time I've been here.

[Matt Welch]

We've only had one premature lever and that show got cut. And that person will never be on again.

[Chris Cuomo]

Who is that?

[Michael Tracey]

We'll talk about it after.

[Matt Welch]

It's one of our last episodes.

[Chris Cuomo]

Wasn't my brother no good?

[Michael Tracey]

But before.

[Matt Welch]

That reminds me.

[Michael Tracey]

Although he was supposed to come. He was during that. We were going to save him.

[Matt Welch]

No, we were going to.

[Chris Cuomo]

There's no saving him.

[Michael Tracey]

And he didn't come.

[Chris Cuomo]

The club has rules.

[Matt Welch]

Yeah.

[Chris Cuomo]

An allegation is enough. If that is the rule, he's done.

[Michael Tracey]

If he'd run a better campaign, change the rule.

[Matt Welch]

He had no chance.

[Chris Cuomo]

He could have beat that kid, he had no chance. Look, Mamdani has his flaws, but just like with Trump, they don't like some. Some like him for what he says about Israel or against Israel or Islam, whatever category of invective. You want some, but not many. They looked past that. They looked past the age, the inexperience, the. Why was his family brought from India over to that North African country, by the way? What were they part of? What kind of overseeing culture, like all that is. Yeah, but he's on the outside, and he's right about what's wrong. Andrew could not check those boxes, and I think it wound up being a big thing. And sliwa. But look, that's what you sign up for is. It was not the race that I wanted to see my brother run. You know, I. I didn't want him. I. I kept saying to him, you've given enough. You know, you've given enough. You don't have to go back in there again. He saw it differently, but I'm not surprised by it.

[Matt Welch]

Again, we learned the lesson. Don't ever stiff the Fifth Column. It's just not in your interest. Don't do it. Don't do it.

[Chris Cuomo]

Well, you're petty guys. You're vengeful guys. Yes, and I like that. I'm not vengeful.

[Michael Tracey]

Little petty. Depends on the day, though.

[Matt Welch]

Chris Cuomo. Thank you.

[Chris Cuomo]

Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. Appreciate it. Appreciate you.

[Matt Welch]

Bye.

[Michael Tracey]

Handshake.

[Matt Welch]

By a very strong handshake.

[Chris Cuomo]

What? Is it too hard? What am I doing wrong?

[Michael Tracey]

Pause.

[Chris Cuomo]

I feel like it's the same as you. Oh, that was.

[Matt Welch]

That was.

[Chris Cuomo]

That was good.

[Guest or Producer]

We know of new method of attack. The Trojan horse. The Fifth Column. The Fifth. Fifth. The Fifth Column.

[Chris Cuomo]

That's.

[Guest or Producer]

Spies, saboteurs and traitors. These dividing forces are undiluted poison. They must not be allowed to spread in the new world as they have in the old. Our moral and our mental defenses must be raised up as never before against those who would cast a smoke screen across our vision. Fifth. Fifth. The fifth column. Fifth column. Fifth column. Fifth column. Fifth column. Fifth column. Fifth column. Fifth column. Fifth column. Fifth column. Fifth column. Fifth column. Fifth column. Fifth column. Fifth column.