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- [00:00]
Mike Pesca
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- [04:40]
Melissa DeRosa
Yeah, no, I write catalog them in my book.
- [04:43]
Mike Pesca
There is an accuser who was on a rope line who said he touched her shirt but not her breasts, like her shirt near her collar and traced the name of an agency that she worked for. Okay, look, here's a rule. Men should never touch women they don't know. I didn't really realize I was living by that rule, but I guess I'm kind of inhibited and I do. And men should probably never raise issues of sex or respond to issues of sex when they are raised. Yeah, just as a means of self protection. I'll buy it. Is it sexual harassment? I don't know. My question for you, I have a couple, but one is do you think James hurts her credibility by chronicling and crediting all the accusers, even the most implausible of the accusers? Or the other argument would be that you can't discount any of them. And it does go towards a practice if you can show even what seems to be low level accusations if there are so many of them.
- [05:42]
Melissa DeRosa
I think that Tish James, the press has given her such a pass. Tish James should have zero credibility with how she dealt with that report. If anyone actually took five minutes to look at it. She took weapons, she weaponized everyday interactions where actually of the 11, three of the women, say, if you read their transcripts, I don't consider the sexual harassment three. There's three people in that report who were not state employees. They were people like you just described on a rope line who it's like touched near her collar, on her shirt. This woman, which the New York Times put on the front page where the governor put his hands on her face at a wedding as he's literally walking around the room, kissing everyone on the cheek, posing for photographs, doing what politicians do. So there's three women who were non employees where it was things like that, like Joe Biden rope line kind of things. So that's six. So you peel away like those six just as a starting point and you're left with these last five. And it's like the things that you're left with is one woman that says, oh, he commented to me in Italian and I don't speak Italian, but I think he was referring to my looks. And he was. I was sitting across a desk like 15ft away and he commented on my necklace. And I think it's because he was really looking down my shirt. Okay, that's one of the remaining five. And then you have Charlotte Boyle or Charlotte Bennett, Lindsey Boylan, the trooper, and. And Brittany Camiso, which are the more complicated ones. But I believe as a woman who's fought not just with words, but actually negotiated legislation, actually used the power of my position to change laws in order to make it easier for women to make claims of sexual harassment, to extend the statute of limitation on rape, et cetera. I think it hurts women writ large on this topic when you cheapen it like that. And you create this environment where more serious claims or real claims are not taken seriously. And it's easy for people to dismiss it and say, this is bullshit, this isn't real. And that's where I think we're sort of teetering on right now, where the MeToo movement, which I think played a really critical role early on in exposing not just Harvey Weinstein, but sort of rank abuse across a lot of industries of powerful men in talking about things like rape and sexual harassment in exchange for roles on the silver screen or promotions or this or that. And it's sort of cheapened it now down to kissing somebody on the cheek or putting your hand on someone's waist for a photograph. And when that happens, you lose the script. And so I think that what Tish did actually hurts a lot of what so many women fought for in making it more easy for people who would never have subscribed to sort of that part of the women's movement to just be dismissive of it and say, this is all horseshit.
- [08:31]
Mike Pesca
A tenant of understanding sexual harassment, as I understand it, is that the alleged harasser doesn't get to define boundaries. So even if it's not a felony, maybe not even a misdemeanor, if Trooper 1 who is in the employee of the governor is standing in an elevator and he runs his finger from her neck to her spine and says, hey, you. He doesn't get to define if that's acceptable. She does. Now, maybe I would say, certainly he shouldn't lose his job for that. But you even told him, don't get involved. When Charlotte Bennet or other survivors of sexual assault start telling you about their experience, you're not there to solve their experience. Maybe, you know, put them in touch with an expert or a lawyer. You even said that.
- [09:19]
Melissa DeRosa
I did say that. I mean, on the Charlotte Bennett thing. And he and I approached this very differently. And I have a close family member who's a victim of sexual assault. He has a close family member that is a victim of sexual assault. My reaction to that in having dealt with my family member is that unless you are trained in that field, you should not be engaging with sexual assault victims and talking about their trauma and how it's impacted their relationships. It's just not. It's not a place that you should be. And he knew that I felt that way, and I said that. I said as much to him. On Charlotte, the trooper, I'll tell you, is fascinating because the trooper sort of sent the whole thing off a cliff, right? Like, when that was in the report, everyone's like, oh, my God, a stage state trooper. Everything else can be political. And Lindsey Boylan can be dismissed because she's running for office and all these other things. But the trooper was this thing where everyone sort of like, you know, it was a breaking point. And I was sued by the trooper, which, by the way, was. Was an incredible thing to be sued by someone you don't know. She actually testified under rules. She only ever said hello and goodbye to me. And then a few weeks after the governor resigned, the administration's over. My lawyer calls and says, this trooper's lawyer reached out. Wigdor, this firm, Wigdor, they do a.
- [10:31]
Mike Pesca
Lot of sexual harassment cases. Lots.
- [10:34]
Melissa DeRosa
And they reached out and they said, we're gonna, unless you wanna privately settle with us, we're gonna sue you. And I was like, are you fucking kidding me? I mean, I don't know if I'm allowed to say that on your show.
- [10:44]
Mike Pesca
You said, no, I think you're halfway.
- [10:46]
Melissa DeRosa
But I was like, yeah, I've never even met this woman. Like, I'm sorry, she's entitled to what from me and what is her claim? And so my, my lawyers put in for a motion to dismiss and I was dismissed from the case a couple of weeks ago. But in the meantime, while there was this year long case pending and I was in the case, I was sort of like, while I'm here, I want to learn everything there is to learn about this and understand how the process works. So I started sitting in on the depositions of these troopers and I'm watching them be cross examined. And what Tish James put forward in her report was versus what I'm watching in these depositions. It's the corruption knows no bounds. She, she puts in. You know, they try to make it sound so sexual that he touched her stomach as he walked by her at a public space or like at an event. And I don't know if they said between her breasts and her vagina. I mean, I guess anything like your shoulders. Trooper.
- [11:42]
Mike Pesca
Trooper. This was. Yeah, I have it right here.
- [11:45]
Melissa DeRosa
Yeah.
- [11:45]
Mike Pesca
As Trooper 1 went ahead of the governor to hold a door open for him, the governor placed the palm of his hand on her belly button and slid it across the her waist to her right hip where her gun was haltered. Trooper 1 felt violated as the governor intentionally touched her in intimate locations between her breasts and vagina. I read that said, wait, her breath, what does that mean? And then I realized, oh, it was just a reference to the earlier sentence, the belly touch.
- [12:09]
Melissa DeRosa
Right.
- [12:09]
Mike Pesca
But like, good if it really happened. But you know, why do you put it in there except to be as incendiary as possible?
- [12:15]
Melissa DeRosa
Exactly. And what was crazier is I was sitting in this deposition with a male trooper who's talking about his interactions with Cuomo and he gets asked these questions. Did the governor, did you ever see the governor kiss a trooper on the cheek? And the guy was like, well, yeah. And they said, who? And he's like, well, me. The governor would give me a kiss on the cheek. And they Said, did you ever see the governor touch anyone's stomach? And he's like, well, yeah. Whenever troopers were holding the door open, he would walk by, he would pat you on the belly, like as, like a, you know, like a recognition, or he would touch your shoulder or he pat you, slap you on the back. Because he was always. They were like. It was his way of acknowledging us. He didn't like that. Otherwise, it looked like we were a piece of furniture. But I'm sitting in there and I'm watching these depositions and I'm like, andrew Cuomo resigned for this. Like, this was the Attorney General's investigation that millions and millions of dollars were spent on. Like, it's just, it was so clearly weaponized and sensationalized and the press didn't do their job. The press didn't scrutinize anything. The transcripts came out. They were excited to sort of take the text messages between me and Chris Cuomo and blow them up, but ignore clear instances of perjury or ignore where women themselves are saying, I was not sexually harassed and asked the question, why was this woman in this report to begin with? So it's just the last or years.
- [13:36]
Mike Pesca
Later after his resignation, it comes out that another of his main accusers had worked to file a false sexual harassment claim while in college. But that is not reported at the time. And even after it was reported, you know, I didn't know about it. And I've been covering and following this case extremely closely, and it was written by someone I know personally that got no pickup.
- [13:59]
Melissa DeRosa
Yeah, well, look, this is the other thing, right? It's. The press was, was very excited to what's the next accuser? What's the next number? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. As you said, as I go through them in my book, you know, on a list. Who was this woman who was a junior assistant in 2000? You know, I think it was 2015 where I watched. I sat in on her deposition a couple of months ago, and she literally sat there and said, I wasn't sexually harassed. And I didn't understand why. I was just thrown into this group of women who said they were sexually harassed. Like, yeah, he would call me sweetheart. He would call me darling. I think it's because he didn't know my name. You know, like, he kissed me on the cheek, but it didn't actually bother me. So, like, sitting in on these depositions, I was like, I felt like I was having an out of body experience where I'm like, no. Everything I thought was exactly as it Was, and this was an attorney general who, and we said it from the beginning, wanted to run for governor, who exploited this great responsibility that was turned over to her to do what was supposed to be a very serious report. And she omitted exculpatory evidence. She hyped up things that weren't there to begin with. She labeled things sexual harassment that weren't. She actually didn't believe all women because in three instances, she listed women who themselves said they weren't sexually harassed. And the press never to this day have held her accountable. And she's never answered a question about it. Anytime she gets asked about a report, she just says, you know, the governor is a serial sexual harasser who's trying to revictimize women. She won't answer any specific questions, but no one's ever held her feet to the fire, which I just think holds up, starts a very, very dangerous precedent moving forward, because it's like the playbook. You want to get rid of a political opponent. Here you go.
- [15:47]
Mike Pesca
But he did resign. And he was a politician who defined politics as hardball and pressure points and using whatever advantages you have, and he was undone by that. So by the end, I mean, you may be right that there were people weren't adhering to the highest ideals of ethical behavior, but that was not how he and your administration defined and played the game up until that point.
- [16:15]
Melissa DeRosa
I don't know that. I mean, look, we played hardball. We didn't, like, make things up. We didn't, like, fabricate and manufacture cases against people in order to, you know, ruin. To take them out of office. Like, I would say that there's a difference between playing hardball and having sharp elbows and knowing how to play the game. And yes, in doing that, over time, you accumulate political enemies versus what she did, which I think was totally corrupting her office for personal political gain.
- [16:47]
Mike Pesca
That's a fine answer. I'm glad I asked. I'm glad you answered. I want to ask you about one more aspect, because it's not in the book. Maybe it came out too late. New York Times revealed that Andrew Cuomo sister was. Well, read the headline. The Secret Hand behind the Women who Stood by Cuomo, his sister. For nearly two years, Madeleine Cuomo quietly worked with grassroots activists to help smear her brother's accuser. You know, the lead talks about the leader of a small but devoted group of mostly older women who banded together online to defend Mr. Cuomo. It turns out her tweets had been secretly ordered up by Madeleine Cuomo, his sister what about that?
- [17:21]
Melissa DeRosa
I've never talked to Madeline about it. I've never talked to any of those women about it. So I don't have much to say on the topic. I will say what I found was fascinating was that the New York times dedicated like 3,000 words to that story and put it on the front page and have yet to cover subsequent depositions that have come out from women saying, I told Tish James I wasn't sexually harassed. I don't know why I was in the report. The selective coverage of what the New York Times has chosen to do vis a Vision, Andrew Cuomo and the Tish James Report and all of that, I think speaks volumes about the New York Times.
- [17:55]
Mike Pesca
I think, I'm sure you agree that by the end, after the sexual assault allegations and the COVID allegations hit, what happened is you had no friends left in the press. Because I do think that the New York Times earnestly believe the sexual assault allegations. They were, and New York Magazine to some extent were propelling that coverage. They took Charlotte Bennett, Lindsey Boylan, Wall Street Journal was, was very instrumental actually in advancing a number of their charges. They took those allegations really seriously. So you lost in terms of the New York Times, the more college educated liberals, the sympathy of them. Then you of course lost the New York Post because you weren't a conservative. The Daily News normally liked you because you appealed to non college educated Democrats. But once your black support slipped away, they had no reason to support you. And I guess the Albany Times Union, which is another big player in this, they just kind of see who has power in Albany and try to describe it rather than shake it up. And once your power was loosening, it was an opportunity for them. Not that especially Times Union did anything wrong, although maybe you would quibble, but that was my assessment. You had no factions left to tell your story. And no matter how much we say, oh, there's alternative media or an opportunity to go around the mainstream media, I think a successful New York Democrat doesn't have as many of those opportunities as, say, some other types of Republicans. Would you agree with my assessment of how you were boxed in by the end?
- [19:30]
Melissa DeRosa
Yeah. Although I do want to just correct you on one thing because you said sexual assault. Many times it was sexual harassment allegations, right? Not sexual assault. But no, I agree with you. I think that the right will always protect itself and its own. You know, look at Fox News, look at the New York Post, look at the Wall Street Journal. Yes, there have been some breaks with Trump which I would argue only happened after 2022, when his endorsed candidates cost them pivotal seats. But, you know, 99% of the time they protect their own. And the Democratic left leaning mainstream media is just not like that. And, and they were, you know, the Times was on a mission to take us down. I think the Post, certainly they were wearing it on their sleeve. And at the end of the day, you know, any sort of nuance or any sort of gray was like lost in this sea of black and white. And there was no way to have any sort of a meaningful conversation in the press.
- [20:31]
Mike Pesca
Where do you see your career going from here?
- [20:34]
Melissa DeRosa
I mean, it's an interesting question. I've been doing some consulting. I was writing for the Daily Beast. I do commentary for a couple of radio stations. But as I write at the end of the book, I don't think I'm done yet. I just.
- [20:46]
Mike Pesca
Are you poisoned in the kind of Democratic circles that once would be thrilled to have hired you?
- [20:52]
Melissa DeRosa
No, that hasn't been my experience at all, actually. Shortly after we resigned, I started to get quiet outreach from people saying, are you taking clients? And otherwise. I think I was sort of prepared to take a long hiatus and, you know, become a person again. And I was trying to figure out, you know, how to pick up the broken pieces of my existence. I was going through a divorce and dealing with the fallout from everything. And I immediately started getting outreach from people saying, are you taking clients? And so I think regardless of everything that happened, I, you know, have experience and value. I think that people pay attention to what I say. And I think that there's a real leadership void and a lack of competence right now at all levels of government. And I don't know for how long I'll be willing to sit it out.
- [21:37]
Mike Pesca
Melissa DeRosa served as communications director, chief of staff, and secretary to Governor Andrew Cuomo. Her new book is what's Left Unsaid. And by the way, there's a lot unsaid, even though this conversation got to a lot of it. My life at the center of power, politics and crisis. Melissa, thank you so much.
- [21:53]
Melissa DeRosa
Thank you so much for having me.
- [22:07]
Mike Pesca
And now the spiel. Andrew Cuomo has been rejected by voters of the city. He has called home for low these last 20 minutes. His sexual assault accusers got the last kiss on the lips, more in a Fredo in a rowboat style than a warm overture. Oh, and Andrew Cuomo should be noted, doesn't seem to very much like people or not people named Cuomo. But how would we really know any of this? He's done no Outreach, except to the back of trooper number one or Brittany comic. So, speaking of which, here's a quote from Cuomo's concession speech, Mandani's night. And he put together a great campaign and he touched young people. No, wait, that was allegedly me. It's my bad Cuomo impersonation. All right, so what I did beside the Cuomo impersonation, I did all the references, right? I made all the jokes. I got dragged into doing the jokes. You know, I don't like having to do the jokes, but I felt I did. But to rebut the jokes, or worse than jokes, the head on allegations that you are a sexual harasser, a sexual accoster, a sex pest, you've got to be able and willing to say something. And to quote the insightful and excellent just list available at mike pasco.substack.com Andrew Cuomo is not just a flawed candidate with baggage. That baggage was strangling him, and he did nothing to extricate himself from having locked his head inside the telescopic handle. He thought the only strategy was not to communicate, except for in the forms of the outdated strategy of ads and flyers, which would have worked if we're in 1988. The problem is the other guy surged. It was too late to catch up and lay out the case against Mamdani. Okay, to be fair, I changed it from the direct quote in the gist list. I didn't go with the telescopic handle imagery. I like it. I'm indulging myself here in the spiel. But this was all a big problem for Cuomo. So there's the front runner strategy, which is just, you know, prevent defense, take no big risks. He went beyond that. There's the Rose Garden strategy, which is let all the media opportunities come to you and then be very discerning. He went beyond that. Cuomo strategy was essentially turtling. Not only did he turn down every interview, even what would have been easy interviews, usually first by committing to it and then by canceling at the last minute. He didn't engage in any way that I could see. He also didn't have surrogates or validators who could get press and were more or less in good standing. So AOC and Bernie endorse Mamdani, Schumer, Gillibrand, Hakeem Jeffries. They stayed. Mom. I think it's because they don't like Cuomo. But a good campaign, a aggressive campaign, who really understood the theory of the case could have gotten them or people like them to go out and say some accurate but vaguely worded things, worrying about, say, Mamdani's boldest, craziest policy ideas or just some of the incendiary rhetoric he engaged in. You could do that as a responsible public figure without offering an explicit or even implicit endorsement of Cuomo. Cuomo couldn't get that. Or how about a prominent, not hated celebrity, possibly a Jewish New Yorker, who could say, you know, this whole globalize the Intifada thing, it's not okay to say that. Even talk about Jerry Seinfeld or Amy Schumer. They're pretty hated now, right? What about a Leave Schreiber? What about Ben Platt? He's a guy, he's on Broadway, right? I have no idea what their stances are, but it's the kind of thing or that kind of person that a campaign, not just that, could have, but with a different theory of the case would have had happened. And then there were the things to be said about what, ma' am, Donnie and all the other candidates would always call the 12 credible accusers. Now, first of all, not all of these women were actually literally accusers. So the timeline is two former employees come forward to say Cuomo talked about sex with them in different contexts. All icky, right? Then a third on a list apparently comes forward. Big Wall Street Journal article. And this causes Democratic politicians to start asking for Cuomo's resignation. But as Eric Wemple in the Washington Post reported, analysts does not believe herself to have been sexually harassed. She called Cuomo grandfatherly. She didn't excuse what he said, but that's how she described him. A few times, he would call her a sweetheart and kiss his hand. But she said in a deposition, quote, it felt like I was just thrown into this group of women who said the governor sexually harassed me. And I wanted to be clear that the governor didn't sexually harass me. And then this is Wemple's reporting. Liz Jackson's attorney told the Washington Post that Liz Jackson never, their emphasis, alleged that Cuomo sexually harassed her. And there was another reported victim of sexual harassment, identified as State Entity employee number two, even though it was clear from one round of Googling that we're talking about a doctor named Elizabeth Dufort. And in a press conference, this doctor demonstrated how to give a nasal swab. She was all clad in full ppe. She gives it to Cuomo in front of the cameras. He has this narration. This is Dr. Elizabeth du Fort, who is in the appropriate PPE wear. Nice to see you, Doctor.
- [27:36]
Melissa DeRosa
You make that gown look good. Head up a Little bit.
- [27:40]
Mike Pesca
Head up, close your eyes. Close my eyes. And that's it. You just heard the accusation of accuser number nine. You make that gown look good. It is a gauche, insensitive thing to say. Especially you don't want to say such a comment if the comment is unappreciated. Now, would it affect your vote for governor? It might. Right? That's legitimate. Or even more legitimate, you might hear that and say, no, it's not the one thing. It's the pattern of behavior. But, you know, there is a percent, and I don't think it's a tiny percent, who might be a persuadable voter who might say, wait a minute, that's one of the accusers, or lists who's not an accuser. She's an accuser. And then maybe if you get the right press around this, you can start making the case that a lot of the other accusers were accusing things like a hand on the back tracing a word on a shirt, things that you wouldn't want someone to do in an office, but maybe also things that don't qualify you for enacting policies that would help the electorate. I'm not saying this is nothing. I am saying that Cuomo didn't say it was nothing because Cuomo and his surrogates didn't say much of anything. Think back to how Donald Trump's backers minimized his much more serious and adjudicated to have actually happened sexual harassment. So is the case that every New Yorker who voted in the Democratic primary is inherently a better person than every Trump voter who made these excuses? I don't think so. I think people are people. They engage in motivated reasoning. They can be convinced of things if given evidence. And a lot of people will just say, ok, Cuomo did some bad things, but I think his policy will help me. And if they think those bad things are slightly less bad than what they were told or what they thought going in to making the decision, it could affect votes. You can't have that effect. If you don't do any press or you don't successfully plant these stories in sympathetic media, the allegations become insurmountable because voters will say, well, they must be so terrible to not even address. Some voters will think that no matter what. But there are enough voters who could be otherwise persuaded. Team Cuomo strategy was not to risk the downsides of attempting that persuasion, and that was clearly a mistake in retrospect. Cuomo, by the way, has a lot of accomplishments, some that he didn't even talk about. He's always talking about the train stations and the plane stations and the subway line, because people have been to these plane stations and train stations, said, oh, that's a nice station. That was Cuomo. But, you know, he never got into things like New York passed gay marriage four years earlier than the rest of the nation. It wasn't all him, but without him, that wouldn't have happened. And maybe you say, oh, well, it was going to pass anyway, but we didn't know it then. And for thousands of New Yorkers, those four years meant a hell of a lot. Also, did you know that of all the states that legalize gambling, New York got absolutely the best deal, the most money from the gambling apps. And that one's pretty much all Cuomo. Sharp elbows, tough negotiator. Kansas, they legalized sports gambling with a tax rate of 10% to the people of Kansas. Illinois, second biggest state after New York, to legalize gambling, they negotiated a 20% rate, and they've since tried to raise it here and there because it's pretty low. Cuomo, 51% tax rate. Maybe all of that is too distasteful. Sexual harassment. Oh, I don't need to hear more. Legalized gambling. Oh, that doesn't seem fun. That has victims throwing a judgeship the way of a Republican legislator who knew he'd be voted out of office after a yes vote on gay marriage. That is kind of sleazy, isn't it? That's not aspirational. But that is the way change happens and government gets done or won't get done now that Cuomo won't be elected. I don't know. I am saying that he did not, and his advisors made a calculation. The more left unsaid, the better. And that calculation has been exposed to be the wrong one. I think in general, his record of accomplishment might have resonated, but it was never communicated. And so now Andrew Cuomo has lost the first election in his lifetime. And that's it for today's show. Cory War is the producer. Ashley Khan is the production coordinator. Michelle Pesca is our chief of Virginia relations. Astra Green is in charge of Florida affairs. Kathleen Sykes has been charged with beehive maintenance. And Leo Baum's just bamming it up doing the bam thing. Thanks for listening.