Give former Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo credit for one thing: He occasionally tells the truth or gets it right, apropos of the old adage that even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in a while.
Speaking to journalist Charlie LeDuff, Cuomo said Americans believe the criminal indictments against former President Donald Trump are political, and that the former president is gaining in the polls because of them.
And, indeed, the RealClearPolitics (RCP) average of polls for the 2024 presidential election shows that Trump is crushing his GOP opponents. Not a single GOP contender is even close.
Americans Don’t Trust the Justice System
LeDuff asked Cuomo, who resigned his office after myriad women accused him of sexual improprieties, whether he thinks “they took you out” because he was a threat to Biden, and that Cuomo would have primaried Biden.
“Probably,” Cuomo replied.
Then the former governor elaborated. “I don’t think Biden is the strongest candidate against Donald Trump. I’m worried about the election from the Democrats’ point of view.”
Indicting Trump won’t defeat him, Cuomo strongly suggested:
I think this hope that, well, Trump is going to lose, that’s no way to win a game. You don’t bet on the other team messing up, right. You have to play the game where you should win. And this whole strategy of “Trump is going to get indicted,” and then.… Yeah, every time you indict the guy he goes up in the polls.
Cuomo doesn’t believe the “strategy” was coordinated. But he does think Democrats stupidly believe the indictments will wreck Trump as a candidate.
“Except the American people don’t believe that the indictments aren’t political,” Cuomo continued. “They believe the justice system is playing politics — the American people believe that.”
Then he backed up his point with polling data. “The first indictment was in Manhattan County.… 76 percent of the American people said it was politically influenced,” including majorities of both Democrats and Republicans, Cuomo said:
Seventy-six percent of the American people don’t agree on the color of the flag. But 76 percent of the American people agree that the indictment was politically influenced, meaning they believe that politics has gotten so ugly, and government corruption has gotten so bad, that we would actually try to indict a person and put him in jail as a political tactic. That’s where people are in this country.
And that’s why indicting him time after time after time, and yes, it looks like … a majority of the prosecutors are Democrats and maybe that’s not a coincidence. But people just don’t trust the justice system.
So, that’s not enough.
And Biden should be primaried, he added, because he would have to prove himself by answering questions and debating opponents.
If he were still governor, Cuomo said, he would run.
Trump in the Polls
The polls suggest that Democrats should share Cuomo’s concerns.
The RCP average of polls on the GOP primary shows that Trump is 44.1 points ahead of his closest rival, Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantis, 58.5-14.4. The rest of the candidates aren’t worth discussing.
But the polls against Biden are even more telling.
Trump leads the president in the RCP average 45.6 to 44.5, and has prevailed in six of the last 10 polls by as much as 4 points.
In other words, the many indictments, all of them nakedly political and aimed at protecting Biden or another weak Democratic nominee from Trump, aren’t harming the former president.
“They wanted to wait, and they did wait,” Trump said after his third indictment:
They waited right to the middle of an election and they waited until I became the dominant force in the polls because we’re dominating everybody, including Biden in the polls, and then they filed `em all, every one of of all that essentially one time, including local DA’s and AGs that even other cases right in the middle of the campaign, where we’re leading by so much and that’s not going to make any impact, because every time they file an indictment, we go way up in the polls. We need one more indictment to close out this election, one more indictment and this election is closed out. Nobody has even a chance.
H/T: Daily Caller
