Chris Cuomo, the CNN host who’s spent recent weeks recovering from COVID-19 and starring in TV’s hottest new drama, had a minor existential crisis on his SiriusXM show Monday.
“I don’t like what I do professionally,” Cuomo said in remarks reported by the New York Post. “I don’t think I mean enough, I don’t think I matter enough, I don’t think I can really change anything, so then what am I really doing?”
Cuomo said he’s tired of several aspects of being a host on CNN, including interviewing disingenuous politicians and trying to pick apart the words of President Trump, a man who “is full of shit by design.” The 49-year-old said he doesn’t “value indulging irrationality, hyperpartisanship” or want to spend his time “trafficking in things that I think are ridiculous.”
Plus, he wants to punch his critics in the face. Cuomo said his job opens him up to remarks from people like the “jackass, loser, fat tire biker” who berated him on Easter for being outside of his home, despite his diagnosis. Cuomo didn’t break a beer bottle over the guy’s head, but he might have liked to.
“I am in an almost powerless position against this ass because I’m a celebrity and he’s allowed to say whatever he wants to me,” Cuomo said. He’d trade the job, he said, for the freedom to tell the biker to kick rocks. “That matters to me more than making millions of dollars a year,” he said. “I want to be able to tell you to go to hell, to shut your mouth … I don’t get that doing what I do for a living.”
The irony is that Cuomo did exactly what he’s saying he can’t do this past year when a man in Long Island bar called him Fredo. “I’ll fucking ruin your shit. I’ll fucking throw you down these stairs like a fucking punk,” Cuomo told the man. After the incident, CNN put out a statement saying it completely supported Cuomo.
