Monday, December 06, 2021

6 December 2021: Opinion - Both Cuomos Quit or Were Fired for the Wrong Reasons

Chris Cuomo, like Andrew, was fired for the wrong misdeeds

We're returning Chris Cuomo to the bottom story of the day with this entry. In this op-ed, Batya Ungar-Sargon argues that both Cuomo's, Chris and older brother Andrew M. Cuomo, should have been fired for other, more valid reasons. For the elder Cuomo, that more valid reason is his COVID nursing home deaths scandals, and for the younger Cuomo, the more valid reason is his failure to cover the COVID nursing home death scandals as a member of the media:

Long before the sexual-misconduct allegations, back when he had gotten a $5 million book deal and an Emmy “in recognition of his leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic,” the governor was signing the death warrants of tens of thousands of the most vulnerable New Yorkers — and then worked hard to cover it up.

His March 2020 edict forced nursing homes to take in COVID-positive patients. He reversed it in May, but it was too late: More than 6,000 such residents had been admitted to nursing homes, where the disease predictably spread like wildfire. Who knows how many of the more than 15,000 New York nursing-home deaths could have been prevented? And rather than take responsibility, Cuomo’s office engaged in a lengthy coverup.

And it wasn’t just nursing homes: Another directive barred group homes for the developmentally disabled from denying readmission “based solely on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19.” At least 552 residents of such homes died of the virus.

Yet there was comparatively little outrage about the betrayal of the developmentally disabled and the elderly, New York’s most vulnerable, certainly nothing akin to the (justified) outrage over the sexual-harassment allegations.

And just as Andrew Cuomo’s downfall came ultimately for sexual misconduct, not the deaths of seniors and the disabled, his brother Chris’ downfall was the result of acquiring his own accuser, rather than failing to cover the nursing-home scandal, an insider told The Post.

The sexual harassment scandals were an expedient way for the establishment in both New York's state government and in CNN's management to make their most visible problems appear to go away. Because dealing with the real problems both institutions face would mean sacking lots more people who think they deserve to be part of the establishment.

Meanwhile, Chris Cuomo has chosen to quit his other media gig, which he announced via Twitter post:

And he's preparing to sue CNN.

Chris Cuomo prepping to sue CNN over his reported $6M-a-year contract: sources

Chris Cuomo appears to care a great deal about his $6 million per year income that he lost after being fired from CNN:

CNN is bracing for a legal battle with fired host Chris Cuomo over his contract, sources said Monday — after a bitter back-and-forth about what the network knew of his secret efforts to aid his embattled brother, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Chris Cuomo, 51, has hired lawyers and is preparing to file suit against CNN if it doesn’t honor the remainder of the four-year contract he signed last year, sources familiar with the matter told The Post on Monday.

The deal is reportedly worth $6 million annually.

But CNN has “no intention of paying [Chris] Cuomo a penny,” an insider said.

“If he gets a settlement, there would be uproar,” the source added.

Another source said, “CNN has a standard morality clause in their contract that says if the employee does anything of disrepute, they can be immediately fired.”

According to the law firm CNN hired to review Chris Cuomo's texts, deposition testimony in the New York state attorney general's probe of his brother's alleged sexual harassment of multiple women, and conduct at CNN, the network was well within its rights to fire him:

Lawyers from the white-shoe firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore told CNN that the documents gave the network legal grounds to fire the “Cuomo Prime Time” star for contacting “sources” about planned news reports regarding his brother, as well as trying to dig up dirt on at least one of Andrew’s accusers, sources said.

The lawyers’ stance even came ahead of a planned internal CNN probe into an unspecified sexual misconduct allegation against Chris Cuomo that the network received last week and which dates to his time working for ABC News, sources said.

The important thing to note in this article is the multiple sources at CNN who are willing to talk to other media outlets about Chris Cuomo. That's an indication he's far less popular among his former co-workers than he seems to think.

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