New York governor Kathy Hochul has always been deeply unpopular, but the arrest of her chief of staff last week for acting as an agent of China has made the situation so much worse. There are now fears that Hochul’s nonstop problems could severely hurt Democrats this year and beyond in New York. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: New York Governor Kathy Hochul has always been deeply unpopular, but the arrest of her chief of staff last week for acting as an agent of China has made the situation much worse. There are now fears that Hochul’s nonstop problems could hurt the under ticket for the Democrats. It’s not just this case, by the way. She had another person who worked for her prosecuted for bribery.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Her first lieutenant Governor was arrested and prosecuted.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, for bribery.
Farron Cousins: So, Kathy Hochul’s entire administration, first of all, let’s not forget the fact that she came in after Cuomo and Cuomo ended up towards the end there, an absolute disaster. He was the rising star of the Democratic party. He was the guy that they originally were talking about, hey, if Biden can’t, let’s get Cuomo. And so, okay. It ends in disaster. He’s gotta go. We get Hochul. And Hochul somehow has managed to be so much worse than the end of the Cuomo years.
Mike Papantonio: Well, do you know what? Do you remember Cuomo, when Cuomo said it, I thought, well, of course you’re saying she’s gonna be awful, but he said she’s gonna be awful. And maybe he knew she was gonna be awful because he knew all of these things were in place. All the things that she had to try to overcome. The crime issue, it’s killing her. It is absolutely killing her. The issue of housing in New York is killing her. The immigration, dealing with immigration in New York is killing her.
Farron Cousins: The pocketbook issues, the surge pricing in New York. It took her two years to get a bill passed with a Democratic controlled Senate. Her appointees to the courts getting shut down by her own Democrats. 39% approval rating. The state is telling her, we don’t like you. And the last thing she needed was, okay, well, you may not like me, but at least my friends aren’t going to prison. Uh oh, well.
Mike Papantonio: They are going to prison.
Farron Cousins: They could be. Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Well, I remember listening to, it was Cuomo and it was all of his kind of flying monkeys. She’s gonna be awful. She’s gonna be terrible. This is gonna happen. Well, they knew. It was already there. It was in place. But this gets a little crazy when you have one of your key staff members interviewing, saying that we can’t allow the Taiwanese ambassador to come to the United States. She stopped that. She did stuff like that because she was on working for China and all of this influence pedaling, she’s been doing, this person who’s being prosecuted. But there’s no way that you can say that doesn’t reflect on leadership. I’d hate to think, we’ve got what, 250 employees here. I’m probably gonna know it something’s wrong. I mean, I’m gonna hear bits and pieces.
Farron Cousins: And it’s almost sad what this employee got in return for all of these huge favors to China.
Mike Papantonio: Talk about it, I though the same thing.
Farron Cousins: She got some duck dinners.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Twice fried duck. She gets a twice fried duck dinners. It’s almost comical.
Farron Cousins: You know, hey, we need you to do all these favors, get China all these special favors in New York where we want to do business. We’re gonna make billions off of it, and, uh, we’re gonna take you out for some nice wings.
Mike Papantonio: How about her husband, Hu? What is his name, Hu?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. So he is a Chinese businessman. So he benefited directly from that.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. So this is.
Mike Papantonio: Not just twice fried duck. He got some other stuff.
Farron Cousins: So he is of course also one of the individuals that’s been indicted here. And yeah, he is deeply connected to these individuals. So it’s very obvious based on the indictment that she is abusing her position. Using it to get her husband rich, using it to fill her belly, I guess.
Mike Papantonio: What do you think of her? What do you think of Hochul? When you watch her, when you watch her speak and you go, what do you think?
Farron Cousins: From what I’ve seen, again, I don’t get too much involved with the state politics, but what I’ve seen from all the friends in New York and all the folks on social media, they despise her. She has been horrible on the economic issue. She’s been horrible on all of the immigration, on crime, on everything. Just dropped the ball. And even Nancy Pelosi now is starting to worry, hey, we’ve got a real problem. Because even though you’re not on the ballot this year, you’re a Democrat and you’re at the top of the food chain in New York, and that’s gonna hurt us.
Mike Papantonio: I love the way she went back at Nancy Pelosi though. Okay. So Pelosi says, you’re gonna cost us elections. And Hochul comes back and says, really? You cost us this many House members in California, Pelosi. It’s just this cat fight, this infighting that I just think is so interesting. I think this is the end of her career unless she does something really extraordinary.
