Even Chris Cuomo, the NewsNation anchor rebuilding his brand on being balanced and reasonable, is growing gravely concerned about what’s happening with the Trump administration’s deployment of the National Guard to U.S. cities.
“Bait and switch,” the former CNN anchor said Tuesday. “You know that expression. It’s an old one from the world of advertising and it is popular in politics. Here’s my question for you: Is there a massive sell-job going on right now around the National Guard? What if sending the military around the country isn’t just about fighting crime, but making it a crime to fight back against this administration?”
Cuomo called Trump’s initial crime-fighting efforts in Washington, D.C., “an early political win … not because of how I felt about using the National Guard. I said the opposite.” But he noted that Democrats “took a bruising” by refusing offers for federal help, appearing “pro-crime” and painting Trump’s guard deployments as a “projection of power.”
“But then it evolved,” Cuomo said, “or devolved.”
Cuomo said the narrative has changed – the justification for troops went from “crime” to “general lawlessness” in places like Los Angeles, Chicago and now Portland – and by no coincidence, where citizens have staged vigorous and sometimes violent protests against ICE raids.
“This is about denying the president’s power to encroach using the military on a state’s right to self-governance,” Cuomo said. “That’s a real thing. The politics are noise. The signal is the law and the cases based on it.”
Cuomo acknowledged that the president has the right to call out the National Guard for things like invasions, rebellions and to protect civil rights – but that’s not what he’s seeing on the streets of American cities.
“Now, that gets me to a sensitive issue,” he continued. “I understand why people on the right and in MAGA don’t like being beaten over the head with January 6th all the time. … I get it.” Cuomo admitted he changed his position on the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol building – from an insurrection to an ugly and “criminal” riot – as more information came out in the months that followed.
“I changed with them because I am not a fool,” he said. “And only a fool or a pod bro holds on to a bad position when they have better facts. … And if you think it’s a coincidence that they’re using the word ‘insurrection’ about these cities as a political play to get it away from January 6th … this is what you’re being asked to believe.”
Cuomo surmised that while street crime was the bait, the “switch” is Trump inching toward complete authority over the National Guard: “They’re his. He can use them wherever he wants, whenever he wants. Doesn’t matter what the hell a governor says. … you’re supposed to believe that.”
The best hope to check that imbalance, Cuomo said, is in the justice system – which is now under attack, too.
“Did you not hear what Stephen Miller said calling it an insurrection – saying that these judges were [staging] an insurrection? … The law is the best that we can do about this. Not politics. They’re trying to make it about politics. Using that word ‘insurrection’ against judges!”
While Congress is “a bunch of shameless opportunists” and the executive branch is “all about self-interest,” Cuomo concluded, “the justice system is the best hope we have in our democracy right now.”
“It is the judiciary. Why do you think they keep attacking the judiciary? Why do you think since 2019 threats against judges are up 200 percent? Why do you think it was legitimate when [the judge] who ruled against [Trump] in September has her house blow up in an explosion that they look at it as potential arson because of all the threats she’s gotten? That’s where we are.”
Watch Cuomo’s entire take in the video above.
