CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, who was captured on a viral video getting into a profanity-laced exchange with a person who called him “Fredo,” once referred to himself as the hapless “The Godfather” character in a radio interview.
Cuomo was interviewed by…
CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, who was captured on a viral video getting into a profanity-laced exchange with a person who called him “Fredo,” once referred to himself as the hapless “The Godfather” character in a radio interview.
Cuomo was interviewed by Curtis Sliwa on his AM 970 radio show in January 2010 about whether his brother Andrew might seek the democratic nomination for governor.
Sliwa said he dubbed the Cuomo family “la Cuomo nostra.”
“There is a group of people – politicos – who always hint they might run, but not necessarily plunge all the way, and they are members of la Cuomo.”
“Who am I then, Fredo?” Cuomo asked in response.
“Yes, exactly,” Sliwa said. “So you better be careful that your brother Andrew doesn’t kiss you on both cheeks and then all of a sudden they take you out on the middle of the lake and where’s Chris?”
“He kisses me plenty because he’s a great big brother,” Cuomo said.
A video that went prime time Monday on Twitter shows Cuomo in a heated shouting match with a man who called him “Fredo,” with the CNN newsman telling him it was an insult to Italians the same way the N-word is for African Americans.
“Fredo is from the ‘Godfather,’ he was a weak brother and the use of it to an Italian is disparaging,” Cuomo tells him in the video.
The man then tells Cuomo that he thought that was his name.
Cuomo, the son of the late Gov. Mario Cuomo, shoots back, “Own what you said” before threatening to “throw you down these stairs like a f—ing punk.”
CNN did not immediately respond to request for comment about Cuomo referring to himself as “Fredo” in the radio interview.
Fredo, one of the three Corleone brothers in the film, eventually betrays his younger sibling Michael.
