New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo back-peddled on comments he made earlier this week about America’s “greatness” after getting bombarded with tweets from President Donald Trump the past several days.
“I want to be very clear,” he said during a conference call with reporters, according to CBS New York. “Of course America is great and of course America has always been great.”
Cuomo told reporters he simply disagreed with Trump’s definition of “greatness,” citing specifically his family separation policy at the U.S.-Mexico border.
During a bill signing earlier this week, Cuomo said that America was “never that great” in the context of gender and women’s equality.
“We’re not going to make America great again. It was never that great,” he said. “We have not reached greatness. We will reach greatness when every American is fully engaged. We will reach greatness when discrimination and stereotyping of women, 51 percent of our population, is gone, and every woman’s full potential is realized and unleashed and every woman is making her full contribution.”
The comments were met with widespread criticism, especially from President Trump, who slammed Cuomo for New York’s taxes and claimed the governor was having a “meltdown.” Cuomo shot back on Twitter, saying America “will not go back to discrimination, segregation, sexism, isolationism, racism or the KKK.”
Trump on Friday then tweeted suggesting that Cuomo’s comments were “career threatening” and took a shot at his brother Chris Cuomo’s CNN ratings.
"Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.
O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!"
-Langston Hughes
BREAKING: ABC News Obtains Exclusive Video of Cuomo Dissing America:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0Fuw56ZY6kWas America great when we were rounding up and killing indigenous people, shipping people from the African continent and enslaving them, or how about when we were throwing people of Japanese descent into internment camps? Please, America has never been all that great. You had it right the first time.
Thanks, but I’ll wait for the inevitable Omarosa tape of Donnie signing over the title to the United States to his boss in Moscow.
Typical Democratic capitulatory bullshit.
Why didn’t Trump have to apologize for using the slogan “Make America Great Again,” a clear statement that America was no longer great?
Michelle Wolf made a surprise appearance in Atlanta on Wednesday at a Jon Stewart-Dave Chappelle concert (as did Chris Rock!). She said: “Democrats always find a way to fuck things up.” She’s right.