By Dave Goldiner, New York Daily News
NEW YORK — President Donald Trump trashed Chris Cuomo for getting into a profanity-laced confrontation with a man who addressed him as “Fredo.”
Interrupting his golf vacation, Trump repeated the anti-Italian slur to slam the CNN anchor, whom he accused of losing his cool due to “low ratings.”
“I thought Chris was Fredo too,” Trump said on Twitter. “The truth hurts.”
Donald Trump Jr. earlier called Chris Cuomo “the dumb brother” for letting himself get dragged into the confrontation, which was apparently staged by a right-wing YouTube show.
He used a wink-wink emoji to stress that Chris Cuomo isn’t as bright as his brother, Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
“‘Fredo isn’t the N word for Italians, it just means you’re the dumb brother,” Donald Trump Jr. wrote on Twitter.
The Twitter spat erupted over a YouTube video that depicted Chris Cuomo squaring off against a stranger who apparently called him “Fredo.”
The anchor is shown angrily berating the man and repeatedly cursing at him. He even threatens to throw him down the stairs. The video ends when others step in between the two men.
The unseemly feud quickly drew the attention of the president’s allies. A Trump reelection campaign spokeswoman blasted Chris Cuomo as racist for comparing a casual put-down from the movies to a “dehumanizing word used against blacks.”
That pushback was more than a little ironic since Trump has been accused of brazen racism for defending violent white nationalists at Charlottesville and branding Mexicans as “rapists and criminals.”
Chris Cuomo got some surprising support from Sean Hannity, who broke with his right-wing allies to say the fellow TV personality was right to stand up to an obnoxious bully.
Hannity tweeted: “I say good for @ChrisCuomo. He’s out with his 9 year old daughter, and his wife, and this guy is being a jackass in front of his family. Imho Chris Cuomo has zero to apologize for. He deserves the apology.”
Anthony Scaramucci, the onetime Trump ally, also stood up for Chris Cuomo.
———
©2019 New York Daily News
Visit New York Daily News at www.nydailynews.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.