Is This the Montage of the Week or What?

BUCK: Clay, you are gonna love this, my friend. You’re gonna love this. The montage of… This might be Montage of the Week, and I don’t know if you’re a Team America guy.

CLAY: Oh yeah. Yeah.

BUCK: We need a montage right now. Cuomo had not just an Emmy award and a $5 million book deal. He had the entire media establishment, just about a year ago, eating out of his hand. He was amazing. He was brilliant, handsome, dashing, saving the country, saving lives. He was a combination of Charles Bronson in his heyday and Mother Teresa!

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: It’s kind of a weird combo, but that’s what came to mind.

CLAY: It works!

BUCK: It worked, right?

CLAY: It worked.

BUCK: You got the mustache, but then you’re tending to the sick.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Anyway, here is what they were saying back a year ago about Governor Cuomo.

BRIAN STELTER: How would you contrast Cuomo and President Trump’s handling of the crisis?

DAVID REMNICK: Truth versus mendacity.

NICOLLE WALLACE: Governor Cuomo out there day after day after day everything Trump isn’t: honest, direct, brave.

CARL BERNSTEIN: Real leadership of the kind the president of the United States should have provided.

CHRIS HAYES: Governor Cuomo is clearly living in a totally different reality, the actual one, than the president of the United States.

RACHEL MADDOW: Governor Cuomo has become a national leader.

JOHN HEILEMANN: For a lot of people Andrew Cuomo has become the leader of the Democratic Party.

JOY REID: He is conveying incredible strength.

BRIAN STELTER: This has been a remarkable show of leadership by Governor Cuomo in recent days. He’s providing hope, but not false hope.

NICOLLE WALLACE: Governor Cuomo, I think, is one of the heroes on the front lines.

CHRIS CUOMO: With all of this adulation that you’re getting for doing your job, are you thinking about running for president?

JOHN HEILEMANN: Andrew Cuomo, who has a daily television show now, and has become in some ways the shadow president.

JOY REID: Maybe Trump is just a little bit mad that Governor Cuomo has become a kind of acting president.

BRIAN STELTER: Dealing with hardship actually makes you stronger. That’s what Governor Cuomo said earlier today. That’s what I’m gonna go teach my kids right now at home.

BUCK: (impression) “I’m gonna go teach my kids at home about how amazing Cuomo is, Clay.”

CLAY: Is our industry unique? I know everybody feels like people in their industry is, at times, filled with imbeciles. But does the average guy out there who’s a roofer drive around and think the other roofers are complete imbeciles? A lot of times when I hear people who do what we do, Buck, I’m just thinking, “We are surrounded by some of the dumbest people on the planet who are given remarkable amounts of leeway,” and their stupidity is never acknowledged.

BUCK: Nine out of 10 roofers in America right now would give you better political analysis over the last year than you’ve gotten from multimillionaire CNN anchors. Nine out of 10. One out of 10 maybe don’t play that close at ten. Nine out of 10 you’d get political analysis from. It is appalling how these are supposed to be honest. Everybody forgets this just because the dishonesty, it’s almost overwhelming. It’s like you’re being hit by tidal waves of… bull. (pause) So to speak.

CLAY: We gotta be careful what words we use when we’re coming out of that montage.

BUCK: I can say bull!

CLAY: No, no, no, but you wanted to go beyond “bull.”

BUCK: Clay.

CLAY: You could feel it brewing.

BUCK: We gotta do the after-hours, salty version of the radio show we can let it all rip.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: But I’m just saying, it’s a tidal wave of malarkey, to borrow from Biden.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: And we sit here, and we have to remind ourselves, those people that you heard from? Most of them consider themselves objective journalists. They were giving the now-disgraced, sexual-harassing, covering-up-deaths-of-nursing homes governor constant back rubs on the air, referring to ’em as the acting or shadow president. Do you think a single one of them, by the way, is embarrassed by this, Clay? No! Because they did what was advantageous in the moment for their team. That’s always the way. That’s always the whole game.