Politico reports that at a Hamptons fundraiser last Saturday, Cuomo told his well-heeled supporters that, contrary to all available evidence, he could win the New York mayoral race as an independent—because he was likely to have the implicit support of President Donald Trump.
The imperative of defeating Mamdani justified the new coalition Cuomo is trying to create of his die-hard loyalists (who are Democrats) with Trump Republicans.
Some of that latter group might be tempted to back Curtis Sliwa, the actual GOP nominee in the race. Cuomo told these donors, “We can minimize [the Sliwa] vote, because he’ll never be a serious candidate. And Trump himself, as well as top Republicans, will say the goal is to stop Mamdani. And you’ll be wasting your vote on Sliwa.” Cuomo went on to emphasize that he’d be a mayor who could find common ground with Trump:
They’re raised on a steady diet of propaganda that says that they’re the Greatest Country in the World, with a perfect democracy created by visionary prophets who understood the whole of human history back in the late 18th century. Therefore, whenever they’re forced to confront the fact that that isn’t the case, they rationalize things by assuming that the present state of affairs is just an anomaly and that the perfect candidate is just around the corner who’ll win universal support and usher in a new golden age.
They’re incapable of understanding the idea that, when things are fucked, you’re going to have to go through a long path consisting of several stages of not-quite-as-fucked before things become good.