The Chris Cuomo Project - Chris Cuomo on Why Politics Shouldn’t Ruin Thanksgiving
Episode Date: November 28, 2024Chris Cuomo reflects on the meaning of Thanksgiving in a divided world, challenging the idea of cutting off people over politics and emphasizing the value of grace, gratitude, and connection. He exami...nes how political divisions are often exaggerated for gain, why focusing on what unites us matters more than ever, and how to have meaningful conversations with those who see the world differently. With personal insights and a call to focus on what’s good, Cuomo encourages viewers to make Thanksgiving a reset for understanding and unity. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Join Chris Ad-Free On Substack: http://thechriscuomoproject.substack.com Support our sponsors: Get Maine Lobster Visit GetMaineLobster.com and use promo code CUOMO for 15% off your order today! Oracle See if your company qualifies for this special offer at Oracle.com/CCP That’s oracle dot com slash CCP. Shopify Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at SHOPIFY.COM/chrisc to upgrade your selling today. Cozy Earth Want your Cozy Earth pajamas by Christmas? Order by December 13 for free shipping! Missed it? You can still get expedited shipping until December 20 to ensure it arrives in time. Don’t wait—head to cozyearth.com/CHRIS now and use my exclusive code CHRIS for up to. 40% off. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Today should not be a tough day today Today is Thanksgiving. I have never seen one where people were so worried.
I want to talk about why. I want to talk about what I'm doing about it. But most importantly, I think
there's just a greater and obvious truth that we're all missing.
I'm Chris Cuomo. Welcome to the Chris Cuomo Project.
Let's just get after it right now.
This is my favorite day of the year.
Okay?
I love my kids' birthdays, but I'm saying in terms of holidays, this is everything.
Thanksgiving.
Don't spare me or miss me, as they say these days,
with the idea of where it originated
and the exploitation of the natives.
I get it, I get it.
Everything is flawed, okay?
And you can't undo everything
because there are elements of things that you don't like.
And that's politics, put it to the side.
That's my whole point.
Thanksgiving is about food and friends and family and caring and remembering,
taking one day to do what we say we're supposed to do every day.
And I need it so badly. I am so poor at practicing gratitude.
I don't even like when people say it.
Practicing gratitude, manifesting, yep, yep, yep.
Whatever it is, it sounds so woo woo to me.
But there's something very basic about this
and I think we need it this year.
I'm telling you, it is not bigots versus non-bigots.
I'm telling you, it is not bigots versus non-bigots.
These divisions are largely manufactured
for the advantage of the political parties.
People voting for Harris doesn't make them a radical, doesn't mean that they hate Trump, some do,
but not in the main, people who vote for Trump doesn't mean that they're a bigot.
Some are, but not in the main.
And even if, look, even if you can't get your head around
how they don't see that they needed a change away
from Democrats or how they can't see how anyone could vote
for Trump with everything we know about him.
They did.
Now what?
I'm not inviting them.
I keep hearing it.
Can't have them around me.
Can't deal with it.
I'm telling you, you're making a mistake.
As a 54 year old guy who is too often
inwardly and outwardly defined by flaws
and failings and mistakes,
I'm telling you don't make this one, okay?
Two reasons.
One, if you think that you surround yourself
with like-minded people and you get better, there's as good a chance of that as the idea that when you talk that you surround yourself with like-minded people and you get better,
there's as good a chance of that as the idea
that when you talk, you learn, okay?
When you talk, you don't learn.
And if everybody's talking the same talk that you talk,
then it's the same thing as if you were talking,
so you don't learn, all right?
You gotta get out of this idea that the silo is okay
because the other people are
nuts.
Yeah, there's some nutty people, but not in the main.
Look, we just had an election where a majority of the country voted for Trump.
Okay?
Why?
I don't believe it's because of Trump.
I believe it's because of the desire, almost a desperation,
to disrupt systems and culture and norms and narratives
and media and social media and noise
that they just think is way too far, way too much.
But how could they vote for Trump?
Because that's how strong the pull is.
Now some of them like Trump.
Some of them like him as a disruptor, but understand his flaws as a person.
And some understand his flaws as a person, think that he should be disqualified, but
it's all a relative assessment.
And what they care about most is not captured by the Democrats the way it was by the movement
that Trump is in front
of.
And I don't think it's about red hats, and I don't think it's about MAGA.
I think that's all electioneering, and that's all vanity, and that's all for Trump's ego,
and for some it's for identity.
But people are worried, and they want things to be better.
I don't believe there's any better place to start than right there.
These people that you don't want to be with may not agree with you on much of anything,
but I guarantee you they agree that they want things better. Okay? And the idea that you are
going to make decisions about who's in your life on the basis of their
politics when it's so manipulated, when it's so exaggerated, when it's all about hyperbole
and it's all about spending weeks and months of barraging you with ads to believe that
one guy is the next Hitler and the other one's a commie.
And you think that that's a fair basis of analysis of somebody's character?
Not them.
It's barely a judge of the two candidates.
You barely got an accurate picture of the two candidates, let alone the people who voted.
Thanksgiving.
What are you grateful for in your life?
For me, the food is the least of it. I don't even like
turkey. I have so many that run around my house. It's a very interesting thing. Right
around Thanksgiving, they all disappear. And it's not because they're getting shot and
they're on plates. I think they know. They're very savvy. Although if they're so savvy,
why do they poke at the reflection of themselves in my car door, which then gets them shot
for sure?
I don't know, but it's not about the food for me.
It's about taking that time to recognize, holy shit, am I fortunate.
Oh, wow.
Wow.
Do I have better than I deserve?
And I get the problem with that for some of you
that better than you deserve,
no, you deserve everything, you deserve everything.
You don't deserve everything.
You don't.
I even say that sometimes to people,
but I don't really believe it.
I don't.
I've made mistakes.
I do things wrong.
I hurt the people who I'm supposed to take care of and love.
I don't do my best at what matters.
And yet, and yet, my health is there, my kids are there, my family's there, my wife is there,
and I do not deserve any of it.
And I use that as motivation to try to do better for them, and by extension for myself. And you don't have to agree with me about me, but you don't really know me.
And more importantly, look, I signed up for your appraisal.
Okay? That's what I do.
By talking into this fish eye, I'm saying, go ahead, judge me.
Judge me.
So you can judge me any way you want.
And I think I give you a decent level of transparency based on that.
Although more and more, I believe I give you a decent level of transparency based on that.
Although more and more I believe I should be focusing on your lives.
I try to use mine as an example or an extension of yours,
but you know, you don't need to worry about my shit
and me and my dynamics.
You got your own and my job is really not to tell you
about me to help you with you.
And that's why I wanted to give you this message because that's how
Thanksgiving hits me every year.
That I am surrounded by people who love me, who forgive me, the most powerful
dynamic for me in faith, in my choice of believing that there is something more.
And it's not easy.
It's not easy. It's not easy.
I mean, you could win the argument in what, five minutes?
That belief in God doesn't make sense.
I know.
I'm not looking to win the debate.
It's a choice because one, we don't know.
You don't know that there isn't one.
I can't prove that there is.
But and much better minds than both of ours have struggled with this same thing and arrived at both conclusions.
But I choose to. And one of the things that draws me to that belief most is the divine concept of grace. Grace. Now we say grace at the beginning of a meal. Why? Well, we're talking about God's grace,
which is what? Well, what it really is, is the divine's extension of forgiveness that you don't
deserve. Sometimes called mercy. You lost the case, they're gonna kill you.
You throw yourself on the mercy of the court.
And that is a small example of this amazing concept
of God's grace, that he forgives you,
even though you do it again and you do it again
and you say it again and you say it again
and you forget again and you do bad again.
Whatever it is, He forgives you.
Just keep trying, just keep trying.
It's beautiful.
It's amazing.
It's so inspiring to me.
It's so motivating to me.
It's so sustaining to me because I need it so much.
And my life's work is to try to need it less on my level. And to extend it more through my own intentions
and actions to everybody else.
We have no business judging other people.
And it's not even for me, judge not
lest you be judged yourself.
No, it's not even that.
You'll be judged. You know, I mean, that's what
happens. It shouldn't, but it happens, especially if you sign up for it, especially with this
fucking thing. That's all social media is, is judgment. Right? Strong and wrong all day long.
That's what that thing is. But this day, we get a chance to reset that.
This day, we get a chance to redefine that.
Redefine the ethos.
Reset the mood.
Reset the vibe.
And I think that you should surround yourself with as many people as you can fit.
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Now, let me step sideways.
This is what I usually do.
Everybody's invited for Thanksgiving, okay?
I love having people.
I love it.
I love it.
My wife wanted to build a house to exactly this. I spent all my money
on it. I did. I didn't know I was going to get fired at the time that I was doing it, but
it gives us that opportunity. Now, this year I'm doing something different. We're traveling. I've
never done this before, unless it was for work. But I haven't missed many holidays. I've always,
I've never done this before, unless it was for work. But I haven't missed many holidays.
I've always made the choice to miss whatever the story was to stay with family on the holidays.
I think it matters.
But this year I got to travel because one of my kids goes to school abroad and they
don't have Thanksgiving and I want us to be together and it's going to be just us.
And in a way that is an extension of this same reset that I'm talking about.
Well, how?
You're saying let everybody else in
and now you're going to keep it just to you?
That's exactly what I want to do.
You tell me not to.
Different.
I'm not living the way you guys are living
with excluding people who voted for Trump,
excluding people who voted for Harris.
I don't play that.
Okay?
That's not how I judge people.
And I try to not judge them at all.
There are things that matter more than that bullshit.
Okay?
We all want the same things.
Every survey says this.
Okay?
More than three quarters of us believe
we all want the same things.
And this is a day to exercise that.
So much of it is artificial.
So much of the resistance and the division and the disagreement is bullshit.
Look, I'll do it right now.
Who wants no border security?
No one.
No one. Oh, yes, they do. The Democrats? No one. No one.
Oh, yes they do.
The Democrats want open borders.
No.
Some very left wing Democrats believe
that America should let everybody in.
That's its mandate.
Okay.
Okay.
That's not the law.
It's not gonna be the law.
It's just a boogeyman.
Oh, it's more than just a few.
No, it isn't.
It's been exaggerated to you and it worked.
Now undo it.
Everybody wants that.
What do you do with the people who are here illegally?
It's gotta depend, right?
You really think they're gonna round up all these people?
It's not gonna happen.
It can't happen logistically.
It can't happen financially.
It can't happen legally.
And I don't think it should happen morally.
Why? Because they're not all the same. Yes, they all entered illegally.
Come on. The guy who snuck across, who's busting his ass and building a business with somebody else,
framing houses, is the same as the MS-13 guy who snuck across with fentanyl?
Come on. They're not all the same. They're not all the same.
And you get that.
Got to find the bad guys.
You got to find the people who came in here with bad intentions.
You got to root them out.
And we should have been doing that all along.
Obvious.
Well, what about all the rest of them?
Who knows?
Who knows?
We have no idea what Trump's plan is, or if he even has one. So there's immigration one of the most divisive issues
No-brainer, okay. We're basically all on the same page about what it is
The economy who doesn't want a tax cut. It's about how you offset it with what's spending and
There's gonna be a fight get rid of the Department of Education. All right, what would that mean? What would it look like? How do you do it? What do we lose?
What is gained? That's how you do it. Stop the forever wars. What does that mean? Do you just
abandon Ukraine? Do you just abandon Israel? That's not going to happen. So how do you do it?
Right? But this was one of those big boogie men. The economy.
Gas prices are the, oh, Trump will fix it.
Yeah, we'll see.
And I'm not being cynical.
What do you think he can do?
Oh, we're going to drill, drill, drill,
and that's going to reduce our dependency on foreign oil,
and all the gas prices are going to come down,
and that's going to bring down food prices.
Well, one, that's not even an economic connection
between the two on a macro level.
That's not how it works.
These are world markets.
You can't drill your way into a gas price
that is unique to the United States,
the exclusion of no matter what else happens
in the world market.
Well, you got to be able to make it better though.
Maybe a little, but not like a game changer.
It's about the world market.
Can you do better?
Yes.
But all of this, you know, the reason my father borrowed that phrase that you campaign in
poetry and you govern in prose is because during a campaign you bullshit.
Okay?
And then when you govern, you got to do the actual work.
And that's why you asking for plans.
And this is why I said asking for plans of politicians
and Trump getting written down
because he only had concepts of a plan.
All plans are bullshit.
You've got to negotiate with the legislature.
Doesn't matter that he has this plan of what he's going to do.
He doesn't get to enact. He's not a king.
So all these things that are so hot and so divided,
they're not even real.
Well, I'm not gonna be around someone
who normalizes his kind of blah, blah, blah.
Oh, because you're fucking perfect, right?
Oh, come on.
I'm not saying I'm perfect, but this guy,
hey, what would you do if he was somebody's husband?
What would you do if he was your cousin?
What would you do?
Call him out on his shit and then give him a hug.
He's not only his worst things, right?
Over half the country just voted for him and not because they're bigots.
See where you agree and then immediately see past the politics
to the fact that these are human beings that you care about, that you share history with.
Come on.
Look, I tolerate it about and to me. You can feel any way you want, okay?
Red pill, the Democrat, Democrat trader, whatever you come up with.
It doesn't affect my judgment about myself.
I only look at it through the lens of what is effective in what I'm saying and how or
not and why.
That's it.
You know, you're not my brother, you're not my sister.
You know, my friends do not define me that way. I cannot tell you how infrequently I discuss politics with my friends, who are a bunch
of pretty sophisticated cats.
We talk politics.
Of course, it matters.
But it's not our main thing.
It doesn't define our friendship.
I would do anything for my friends who
voted for Trump. Anything. I love them to death. My friends who voted for Harris. I
love them to death. I get their concerns, especially if they're women or they're
voting because of the women in their lives. I get it. I get it. I get it more
than the overall electorate did.
And I get the frustrations and the concerns about this country that have people overlook
and put stock in Trump's ability to disrupt and stop and change what they want. I get
it all. And I don't believe that they're coming from bad places. I don't have people like
that in my life. I am thankful for them all.
I am thankful for all of you.
I am thankful, not because it's easy,
but because it is right and there is still right and wrong.
I know, I violate it all the time, so do you.
But you forgive, You have to.
Why?
Because you need forgiveness yourself.
You forgive.
Because it's so much better than the alternative.
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and you get 20% off. There's nothing to lose except your high blood pressure numbers. You know, I don't believe in Trump Derangement Syndrome.
I don't believe that people are obsessed with exaggerating his flaws.
I don't think that's true.
I think that he is such an outlier in terms of how obnoxious the volume of mendacity and
divisive things that it just overwhelms you.
We're just not used to it.
If we had 10 Trumps in a row, then it wouldn't be impressive.
Then Trump wouldn't be Trump and he probably wouldn't have been elected because it's not his ideas. They're not new. It's his disposition
towards those ideas. So that's something that you can move past. Well, I don't want to move past.
Of course you do. You want progress. You want better. How come nobody is
talking about getting anything done together? How come the conversation is all about,
well, what are the Democrats going to do to beat their ass the next time?
And how the right is celebrating the victory in your face, your body my choice. Stupid ugly emails
to black people saying you've been selected to pick cotton. Stupid shit to Jews and other
minorities. I don't know who's doing it. It doesn't matter on one level. What matters is that people believe that that is okay.
You'll say, yeah, because of you normalizing Trump.
No.
No, that's not why.
It's because we have become a society that is addicted to grievance and gotchas and less
than and worse.
And I'm telling you, you know this,
so I'm not telling you, I'm reminding you, okay?
I'm echoing what you have in your own head and heart.
You have never given anybody advice to live that way
in any other way of their life.
You have never been advised to live that way in any other
avenue of your existence. Never. Talk to your kid, talk to your wife, your husband, your brother,
your sister, your buddy, your soul sister. You should be angry and ignore and avoid everyone who
doesn't agree with you. Condemn them. Stay only with people who believe the same thing.
Stick with your own.
That's not America.
Democracy's hard.
This is a tough loss for the Democrats.
They lost to an obnoxious and often intentionally ugly man
with some ugly ideas.
But they're not all ugly. But that's not all he is. And you have to be wide-eyed about the possibilities for better. And that's what
Thanksgiving is. I'm so grateful to be able to be at
that table, to be able to be with family, to be healthy enough to eat, to be
upright and taking nutrition. Sustenance, surviving. It's all so hard. It's also
depressing. It's all so sad on purpose. It's made that way. The algorithms literally
are designed to try to foment these things. And this is a day that allows you to say,
fuck you to all of that. Maybe that's the best way to see it. I know you thought I was gonna say something else,
but Thanksgiving and having everybody there agree,
disagree, whatever, fuck you to all of these people
and all of these mechanisms that are trying to make it
so that you stay apart.
Don't give in.
Don't let the bastards get you down.
You ever hear that expression?
Don't let them do it to you.
Don't become like what you oppose.
Don't become somebody who's isolationist,
who stays away from people they don't agree with
just because of freaking Trump or Harris
or political campaign or an election.
You can do better than that.
You deserve better than that.
And the people in your life who you care about,
have them around and maybe, just maybe,
before you drink too much,
take an opportunity just to hear their why.
And now I don't wanna hear about the conspiracy theory. I don't want to hear about what you heard
I want to hear about this thing that just
What was motivating you and what do you want now move past the vote and into?
the mandate what do you want to see happen and
if it's
Round up all the illegals, you can say to somebody,
listen, I love you.
I want to hear what you have to say.
Don't call them illegals because they entered illegally.
Okay?
They're still human beings.
Don't dehumanize them.
And don't roll your eyes and say that's not what I'm doing,
because that's how Trump got us to the brown menace and the poisoning, the blood and all that other bullshit.
They're human beings.
And they are breaking the law. Yes.
And the law matters. Yes. And the mentoring illegally matters. Yes. It is not okay.
So what do you want to see done about it?
I want to round them all up.
How?
I want to have three years nobody comes in.
Who fills the jobs?
Oh, I have a different visa program.
It doesn't work.
They have a fully funded, fully invested, funded, and executed visa program.
We still have millions of open jobs
that Americans don't want or can't do.
What do we do?
What's the balance?
Have the conversation.
Well, I don't like sanctuary cities
because they shouldn't be able to hide, okay,
who's gonna give these people the resources to deal with them so they stop getting sued by people who say
rightly that you're not affording due process to individuals?
How are you going to deal with that?
Because the federal government put sanctuary cities in a position, right, because they
weren't coming to get the people.
So what do we do?
Well, Trump's an asshole.
The Democrats are the, hey, I don't want to hear it.
Let's pretend, ironically, we're on the floor of the House of Representatives.
You cannot make ad hominous.
Don't insult me.
Don't insult anybody.
Insights, not insults.
Let's have a fucking conversation.
You want to have a conversation, let's have a conversation.
You want to have a fight, I'm not here for it. Or if you're a caveman like me,
if you want to have a fight, let's go outside.
I'll fight you right now.
No, I'm kidding.
Don't do that.
I would do that, but I'm a jerk.
You're not a jerk, all right?
So let's have the conversation.
Let's talk about what we both care about.
There's so much more of that than this other shit.
The concerns about our kids, what we're happy about with our kids.
How much, my last thought, how much can you focus on what is right?
How much attention can you give to your hopes for better and to what is good already?
How much can you discuss about politics in terms of what works and we should do more
of?
And if you say, well, there is nothing, it's all broken.
Don't feed me that shit.
This country is doing more for more than any country in the developed world.
Right? That's the old trope.
America is the worst place in the world until you compare it to anywhere else.
I would rather live in Norway. Bye!
Because they want to come here.
Not so much right now because we've been a little scary to the rest of the world
because of how we're treating one another.
But it'll change. It is the land of opportunity.
And it is a beacon to the free world. And I know this because I have been
fortunate enough to travel this world. And no, I don't agree with what the President-elect says.
I don't think he's helped the impression with a lot of people around the world, maybe
some, but it hasn't been my experience of what Trump means to how people see America.
We have been viewed, even though we've clearly made mistakes around the world, often violent
ones, we are seen as a place of sweet strength, not harsh strength.
We are not China.
We are not Russia.
We believe in helping the little guy, not exploiting him.
Not always.
Not well enough.
But again, that's the trap.
Negative, less than, imperfect.
What's wrong?
What about what's right?
What about why you care about these people that you invited, despite who they voted for,
despite what they sent you on social media?
That's what Thanksgiving can be about.
And I really hope it is for you because we need it.
It is as nutritious as anything you're gonna take in today,
especially today.
How much energy can you put into what
is good, what works, and what is right, and why you care about the people that you had
the nerve to invite around you. Now that is worthy of giving thanks. I am deeply thankful for the opportunity I have.
Greg Ott, new father, first Thanksgiving as a daddy, right?
Yeah, but I'm not on camera.
Get over this.
Get over yourself. Get over yourself. There's no camera. Get over yourself.
Get over yourself, they can hear you.
I know, but.
Nobody wants to see you.
We're gonna have to put a graphic.
You're no Grant Cardone.
So we're gonna have to put a graphic, listen in.
I have so many people in my life who helped me despite me
and I'm very fortunate and I am thankful
and that's why this day matters so much.
I wish I could do it every day. I wish I could live this way every day and I should but
I can't. It's a struggle. But today we can. Today we can and I hope you do. Happy
Thanksgiving. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to be part of your life.
Thank you for being a part of mine and I wish you all good things. See how long you can go focusing on what is right, what is good, what is positive, and
what works.
Let's get after it.