The Chris Cuomo Project - Trump at Arlington: A Patriot or a Pretender?

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

Chris Cuomo rethinks what patriotism truly means in today’s political landscape, focusing on Trump’s controversial actions at Arlington National Cemetery. With debates over who loves America more���Republicans or Democrats—Chris delves into how patriotism is perceived and the complex relationship between love of country and political affiliation. From flag-waving to military service, Chris explores whether patriotism is defined by tradition, change, or something deeper. 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What does possible sound like for your business? It's more cash on hand to grow with up to 55 interest-free days. Redefine possible with Business Platinum. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms and conditions apply. Visit mx.ca slash business platinum. I think it's time that we reconsider and rethink patriotism and how it's playing in this election. More importantly, who's more patriotic? Republicans or Democrats?

Support for the Chris Cuomo project comes from Oracle AI man It's the most important new computer technology. AI, artificial intelligence, is storming every industry. Literally, billions are being invested. So buckle up, what's the problem? AI needs a lot of speed, processing power. How are you gonna compete without costs? Doing the same thing. Speeding up.

Spiraling out of control. Upgrade to the next generation of the cloud. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or OCI. OCI is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and of course, AI needs. OCI has four to eight times the bandwidth of other clouds. One consistent price instead of variable regional pricing. And of course, nobody does data better than Oracle. So now you can train your AI models at twice the speed and less than half the cost of other

clouds. If you want to do more, spend less. Like who? Oh, Uber, 8x8, Databricks, Mosaic. Take a free test drive of OCI at oracle.com slash CCP. Oracle.com slash CCP. AI might be the most important new computer technology ever, storming every industry. Literally billions of dollars are being invested. So buckle up. The problem is AI needs a lot of speed and processing power. So how do you compete without cost spiraling out of control?

It's time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or OCI. OCI is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. OCI has four to eight times the bandwidth of other clouds, offers one consistent price instead of variable regional pricing, and of course, nobody does data better than Oracle. So now you can train your AI models at twice the speed and less than half the cost of other clouds. If you want to do more and spend less, like Uber, 8x8, Databricks, Mosaic, take a free test drive of OCI at oracle.com slash CCP. That's oracle.com slash CCP.

Oracle.com slash CCP Oracle.com slash CCP Support for the Chris Cuomo project comes from factor. Let me tell you you got a fuel up man You got a fuel up to meet your needs food matters You cannot out train the kitchen and factor is the main train the kitchen and factor is the main factor. No prep, no mess. You will meet your wellness goals faster and better if you use the factor. Options, calorie smart, all right, I wanna get slim.

Protein Plus, I wanna be jacked like Como, Keto. I believe in my metabolism. Factors fresh, never frozen meals. Dietitian approved. All right, now that's something to think about, okay? Well, a lot of us are buying food, we don't know if there's any kind of accountability, right? Who you counting on?

The government? Come on. Dietitian approved, ready to eat in just two minutes. Head to factormeals.com slash Cuomo 50 and use the code Cuomo 50. Guess how much you get off? 50% off your first box plus 20% off your next month. That's code Cuomo 50 at factormeals.com slash Cuomo 50.

Get 50% off your first box plus 20% off your next month while your subscription is active. I'm Chris Cuomo. Welcome to the Chris Cuomo Project. Now ordinarily, this is something that I wouldn't pay that much attention to. Why? Because there's a lot of hype attached to it. Who loves the country more? To me, it's like when anybody talks about love.

What do you really want? Show me baby. who loves the country more. To me, it's like when anybody talks about love. What do you really want? Show me baby, full Missouri, the show me state. Show me how you love it. So let's take a look at it that way, all right? Why does patriotism matter? Well, because you wanna pick leaders who love your country. Okay, how do we show that we love our country?

Well, you'll learn about its history. All right, well forget about that because we're like not students of the game in this culture. Nobody wants to read, nobody wants to learn, everybody wants to be told what to think. Now you'll say no, right? And then Americans are about individual freedom and they don't want anybody controlling them.

But man, we are susceptible to groupthink. And if you don't think that's true, just look around. Look at the influence of social media. Look at what you decide to agree with and accept online. You don't even know where it's coming from, let alone whether or not that person or that entity should have any, any faith entrusted to them. Love of country. Love of country's culture. Ah, now we're starting to get on to something

that is a good insight into the political development of the application of patriotism in our two-party system. I submit to you that most people would identify being a patriot with being a Republican. Now, my opinion, the best indication of being a patriot is if you're an independent. Not just because independence is our word, right? We were formed as an act of independence, as an act of defiance, violent rebellion from what? Control. Freedom. Our country is supposed to be about letting people be who and what they want to be. So independence to me are the most patriotic. And those who submit to loyalty, or I would submit to you, fealty to a political party that has no business having the power in our polity that they do.

Not in the Constitution. Not in the Declaration of Independence, that's for damn sure. Not creatures of federal law until we had to figure out how to regulate them. They are mere tradition. And the reason that they have such outsized influence is only because the people we elect are all in them. So which of them is more patriotic? I think people would think Republican.

The Democrats gave them the flag as a symbol. And also you have the next level of analysis. Conservatism versus liberalism. Classical I'm talking about. Not today because who knows what the fuck they mean today. But classical conservatism is a nod towards tradition and keeping things as they are. That sounds more patriotic. Nostalgia. Heritage. Tradition. Yes. However, if you really love your country, do you want to stay as it is if there is improvement to be had? One of the problems with MAGA, to me, as a movement is that it is inherently reductive. Explain to me how a MAGA person believes America is a great country when you are about a slogan that says it is not great.

Make America great again. Make America great. If you have to make America great, is she great? No. Otherwise, you wouldn't have to make her great. No, otherwise you wouldn't have to make her great. And just in case, somehow it implies to you making more great again, it says. So it is inherently reductive, okay? And I'm not saying that people who are into MAGA hate America, but obviously you want to take it back to a different time, and it is hard to argue to minorities in this country what time was better than now for them,

because there has been an evolution of equity and equality in our society, right? Before the 1950s, well 1950s, before recently, you couldn't marry if you were gay. Before recently, you couldn't marry if you were of two different races. Before recently, you couldn't even mix in school. You see what I'm saying? So the idea of going back to another time, you got to be really careful, right? If you care about your country. So even though the Democrats did this real dumbbell thing of letting Republicans use the flag as a party symbol, I don't know what they were thinking. That was the time to say, no, no, no, no, no. The American flag doesn't represent your country, your party anymore represents mine. I don't know why

they did that. But now you start looking at it, and I think I can tell you why. Who did most of the flag burning before the case, I guess in the eighties, check it, when flag burning had to be adjudicated and reviewed by the Supreme Court? And of course, it is legal as a First Amendment right. Talk about what makes America great. What other country lets you destroy its symbols as an act of strength in the belief behind those symbols,

the way America does? 1989. Thank you, I'm always right. So, who burns the flags? More often than not, lefties. And that suggests what? You don't love your country, you're burning its symbol. Is that necessarily true? No.

But it can be true and it certainly can feel true. And in politics, perception is often stronger than reality. And what did we just see with BLM? What was it that gave Obama Adjida a headache from his wife during his first election? Michelle Obama had been quoted as saying that she wasn't proud of her country. Now, I thought it was taken out of context.

It was also when she was in college, all right? If you measured people by what they say in college versus 20 years later, come on. But politics, you know, it's all about gotchas. So the left may come off sometimes as being anti-American, wanting us to change, not liking how we are. But I would argue to you that that may make you more patriotic because you want your country to be better and you don't like that policing is how it is or race relations or equity in society or gender equity or tolerance

is the way it should be in a country that's about freedom. So who loves the country more? The person who is willing to leave it as it is when it's incomplete and unequal or the person who demands change and demands to confront the weaknesses of what and who we are and how to make them better? It's an interesting question, a rethinking of it. So now we see this in very stark relief in the current election, with Donald Trump making the case that lefties, why does he call them socialists? Why is it Kami Kamala?

Why is he doing that? It's to say that they're not American. That's the duh of it. Socialist was always the boogeyman. Now they've upped it to communist. Why? It's just one more step down the same road. Now, it happens to be nonsense, but it doesn't matter.

Oh, and the, well, the socialism isn't crisp. And it does kind of feel like communism. I would submit to you, you don't know what you're talking about. You really don't. Communism is such a severe and specific form of communal ownership of things that we are nowhere near, nor will we ever be near it.

Socialism is something different. Socialistic, absolutely. Public education, entitlements, what Trump just said about paying for IVF for everybody. That's socialism. Okay. Now there's another degree of socialism where society owns the assets and instruments of the economy. We're nowhere near that. We never will be that. If anything, we're moving in the direction of privatizing more and more things. But you do that to say that she's not American.

Funny name, can't say it. Kamala? Kamala? Right? Same thing with Barack Hussein Obama. Barack Hussein Obama. Why? It's great that the guy, if you want to run against him, has the same name as the guy you killed in Iraq. That's great. Makes him a boogie man. And that's what politics is about. Fear, especially when you're pushing that. So,

I say it's time to revisit it. Why? Well, what's best for the country? To leave it as it is or to fight for her to change? Well, it depends on what the change is. You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. And that's what the election should be. The idea of not changing, everything changes. Life is change, right? The only thing that is for sure is that nothing is sure. Everything changes. Everything changes. The question is how. You can't really go back and you're not going to stay where you are, right? You ever hear one of the business things, you're either growing or you're dying? Okay, so life has changed. The question is what kind and to what degree. So who loves their country? Now, one of the great ways to show you love the

country is to serve the country. That's why we respect people from the military, or we should. That's why it's such an important pedigree. That's why it's such an important pedigree that we don't really even scrutinize it. How so? Well, is all service equal? I would say we do a pretty good job of saying yes, right? Pete Buttigieg was in intelligence, right? He wasn't running around with a bayonet in his teeth,

slicing people's throats. JD Vance was a war correspondent, right? And then in the PR side, right? So not a warrior, but he was at war. And then you got a guy like Dan Crenshaw lost an eye as a special operator killing the enemy enemy you don't really hear those people ever really distinguished in terms of the or they're trying a little bit now with walls Right, but that's about when he retired the guy did 24 years So we respect service that much that we don't really even do what we do with everything else which is slice it up

Because you could do that You take Dan Crenshaw on the right, Wes Moore, okay, governor of Maryland. That guy was a field commander in Afghanistan. That dude's a warrior. Ben Crenshaw is a special operator. Dan Crenshaw is a special operator. That dude's a warrior.

To me, that's different than being a war correspondent, being an intel person. Not that all the service doesn't matter. Of course it does. But if you wanted to do a hierarchy, who do you wanna put your weight behind? The guy who killed for you or the guy who talked to people who killed for you?

So you could break it up, right? Dan Crenshaw would be higher, but we respect service so much that we don't do that. You served, you're better than me. I didn't have what it took. I did the job that Vance did, but not to the degree that he did it, not with that degree of commitment where his life was owned by the government and he went to places where it could have been taken. He deserves it. He deserves the respect. We prize it because

it shows that he loves his country. He's a patriot. No way you go to a place where you put your life on your line for your country if you don't give a shit loves his country. He's a patriot. No way you go to a place where you put your life on your line for your country if you don't give a shit about your country. Respect, respect, absolutely. Support for the Chris Cuomo Project comes from AG1. Man, I'm about my nutrition and supplementation. However, every diet, every plan has gaps. Nothing is perfect.

That's why you've got a supplement. That's why I start my day one and done with AG1. One spoonful in water for me. You can put it in anything you want. I like it warm and I get support for whole body health. And I know I'm starting the day right. AG1 is foundational nutrition. Daily nutrients, gut health support,

backed by multiple research studies. So you can trust that you're putting something that is helpful, not hurtful, into your body. If there's one product I trust to support my whole body health, it's AG1. And that's why I'm bugging them to do more business with me. And that's why I've partnered with them for so long. It's easy and satisfying to start your journey with AG1.

Try AG1 and you will get a free one-year supply of Vitamin D3K2 and five free AG1 travel packs with your first purchase at drinkag1.com slash CCP. Drinkag1.com slash CCP. Drinkag1.com slash CCP. Please check it out. Support for the Chris Cuomo project comes from Shopify. You know, when you think of great duos, Batman and Robin, Jordan and Pippin, and the perfect pairing when it comes

to growing your business, you and Shopify. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business development. Why do I like it? Because I like people who are the best at what they do. And I also love that Shopify is there from the beginning. They just don't want to cherry pick businesses that are already most of the way there

and just want to help them maximize. Shopify gives you everything you need to go from seed to big old forest. And I like it. So if you want to take your business to the next level, Shopify is the choice. Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce in the United States. Now that's market share.

Sign up for a $1 a month trial period at Shopify.com slash Chris C, all lowercase. Go to Shopify.com slash Chris C, grow your business no matter what stage you're in. Shopify.com slash Chrissy. Check it out. Okay, so we like to have patriots. We like to have military people

because they seem to be patriots. JD Vance, big check of the box for him. Walls, check of the box for him. Buttigieg, check of the box for him. And all the other ones, we have many of them. We should have more, you should have more. Now, Trump, very into patriots very into patriotism loves the military does he he didn't raise their money enough he didn't really fight for the gi bill the way he could have

he talks about him a lot they tend to like him but he says some stuff that really makes you think about whether or not he's putting a cell job on you. That shit he said about McCain, war heroes or people who got caught, that fucking guy McCain may rest in peace. I liked him. He used to smack me around in interviews and not in interviews. I respected the hell out of him for the integrity of his purpose as a politician. Like his positions, don't like his positions, whatever.

That's to me secondary. He was a man of grit and patriotism. You write off him as getting caught when he refuses to go bad on his own, refuses to get let go because they're not letting everyone go, hung up by his arms for so long he couldn't control his arms the same way for the rest of his life? That was one of the few things that Trump said that didn't get enough shit. And if anyone else had said it, who wasn't the spirit animal of people who were desperate for disruption, it would have been unsurvivable.

But what they want destroyed, what they want changed, is more powerful than all of his inadequacies. But now we just had another one in a very tight election that is about patriotism on a deep level. Our country is in trouble. She has real problems. We are not talking about just putting another coat of wax on the car. There's a big knock in the engine, alright?

And the transmission's not working that well. And it smells kind of funny. We need a real tune-up here. And it's got to be on the basis of who loves what this country is about and what she's capable of. Donald Trump goes to Arlington National Cemetery, not just a cemetery, not just a cemetery where you have military, the cemetery where you have military, a national monument, and wants to do a commercial. Now, here's the problem. One, how dare you

try to use Arlington National Cemetery as a prop. Oh, that's what politicians do. No, there's a law against doing it there. Oh, he didn't know. The fuck he didn't, his people knew. They were briefed about it. They just didn't give a shit. Still a patriot? Yeah, he loves his country so much he's gonna violate the rule and go

and desecrate a place where military is buried. Many of whom had been captured and died being captured. You know, the ones that he doesn't really respect that much. Oh, he didn't mean it that way. That's the way he said it. And I don't know why this man is never accountable for what comes out of his face. I've never seen anything like it.

I hold my 14-year-old more accountable than many of you hold a man you want to be your president. Then we find out that someone who works there comes and says you can't be shooting a commercial here and the staffers get into it with them and push him out of the way. Imagine this is what I always say, January 6th I wasn't an insurrection, I agree. January 6th, it wasn't really that bad. Okay. Now I do disagree. Flip the actors. A bunch of black guys go running into the Capitol on January 6th. Beat up cops. One of them dies a couple days later. Now how do you feel about it?

You guys are going crazy about protests that had occasional violent aspects to them. And those were criminals. And they did destroy a shit ton of property. Hundreds of millions, millions, hundreds of millions, billions, whatever it was. A huge amount. Those weren't protests. Those were riots. We've had plenty of riots in this country. So interesting that January 6th doesn't count as one. Hmm. What does that tell you? That we got big problems with patriotism and how we choose to love our country and what it really means and when it's just words and when it's deeds, when it is profound

and when it's just sound, when it is profound and when it's just sound. You go to Arlington National Cemetery, you do something that is not legal there. Remember, Donald Trump has proven to you time and again he doesn't give a shit about the law if it doesn't suit his ends. And that's the truth. I don't like the cases that were brought against him, two of them in New York. The other ones, the classified documents He did it. Okay trying to rig this election. He did it He messed with them in Georgia and he shouldn't have and he knew it Is it worth prosecuting the guy in the middle of an election? I don't know

I would say no and I know that's crazy how when you're about law and order nobody's above the law. I don't believe that I Don't believe that. I don't believe that. I believe in prosecutorial discretion. Theoretically, no one is above the law. But in practice, prosecutors make decisions of whom to prosecute and whom not to on a basis of policy or also prosecutability. Prosecutability.

And I think that going after Trump for business records, for the other thing they went after him for in New York, the catch and kill stuff, I just, I don't think those are cases you make that often and I don't think you make them if it's not Trump. And to me, just cause I don't like how he is, doesn't mean I don't think we are cases you make that often, and I don't think you make them if it's not Trump. And to me, just because I don't like how he is doesn't mean I don't think we should be better than that. We should.

But this is a man who throughout his entire life has made it very clear that he doesn't give a shit about right and wrong unless it works for him. And that's what took him to Arlington National Cemetery where he wasn't supposed to do doing what he wasn't supposed to do. And then they pushed the person out of the way and they lie about it. Are they patriots? What if Kamala Harris did it? What if Kamala Harris went there and did it? Man, you guys would not shut up about it and you know it. Let's rethink what it is to be patriotic. If you love your country, what do you do? You learn about your country. You know its

history. You know its laws. You know its flaws. You know its virtues. You think hard about how to make it better. You're honest with yourself about that. You fight for her. And you commit yourself to her. You speak well of her. You don't see her just at her worst. You realize the potential of her, the promise of her. You do not make the mistake of thinking for all of her flaws, how justice is not often fair enough to enough people, how the economy that is so great is not even enough, not even close,

how we don't treat each other the way we should, how we don't tolerate the right things, but you never make the mistake of thinking that because we are so highly imperfect that there's any place that your ass would rather be. Because you tell me, oh there is, I'd rather live it. Go. Why don't any of you people go? You may go from New York to Florida because you don't want to pay taxes, but I don't see any of you going to Sweden or Luxembourg or the Netherlands or any of these other places that pop up every once in a while as statistically better. This is the best place in the world for people who are desperate to make it their own way. I love other places. I would definitely live in my blood country of Italy. Absolutely, I would live there. I got family there. I have an affinity to the place, the culture, the language. It matters to me. Never put it before America, not even a chance. I love this country. It gave my family

a gift they never would have had in Italy. My grandparents came here dumb as fuck, okay? Uneducated, unsophisticated, scared, limited, very few skills and talent, very little. Limited. Very few skills and talent. Very little. One generation later, a kid who was born in the back of a grocery store who didn't speak English until he was eight is governor of the state. An orator heard all over the world addressing a national convention, being asked to run for president in one generation. His son is governor of the same state he was. All of his kids are educated. They're healers. They're counselors at law. They're this jerk. Two generations from not speaking the language and not being able to count in any sophisticated way. That's America. Patriotism, of course. But how do you show it?

Trump going to Arlington National Cemetery trying to shoot a commercial? Are you serious? You've never heard of anybody trying to do shit like that before. Why is it okay if you love your country? Why do you lower your standards? Why do you forgive things that are not forgivable? It's a really interesting question. It is time to rethink patriotism. I don't give a fuck how many flags you have or where you put them or when you wave them if you do not live the values of what they represent. And it can't just be, I have the freedom

to be the worst that I can be and say the worst shit that I want to, to as many people as possible. The First Amendment was not designed to allow people to say the ugliest shit to one another that they could think of. Go back and look at the legislative history. Look at the jurisprudential history. They used to punish shit like that.

We have gotten progressively more free, more tolerant, beautiful, I guess, frustrating as fuck, but beautiful. No more fighting words really, you don't really have them. You can yell fire in a crowded theater. You probably can. You'd have to check a few more boxes. People would have to get hurt. It would have had to been imminent.

You would have had to know when it was gonna happen. So we're moving in a direction of more freedom, more tolerance, and then there's reaction formation to that, and then there are waves of intolerance, which I think Trump is motivating. So, who is the real patriot? What is patriotism really about? Who deserves to wave the flag as a symbol? Now, my answer to that last one is easy.

All of us. All of us. all of us. You may not like that I'm waving the flag when you think that I'm against America and that's too fucking bad because that's what America's about, right? I have a right to do things that offend you and you do not have a right to not be offended.

You do not have the legal right to not be offended by me and what I say and what I do until it infringes on your rights. Right? You don't have the right to be upset until my hand touches your face. Maybe if there's a reasonable fear of being touched in the face, assault, assault, assault, assault, battery. But in terms of words, thoughts, you don't have a right not to be offended. You can be offended, knock yourself out. You don't have a right to to be offended. You can be offended, knock yourself out. You don't have a right to stop me because it offends you. That's what politics is for.

That's what elections are for. Patriotism must embrace what is offended by and what it opposes and realize the legitimacy of those things. So who is the real patriot? When you go to Arlington National Cemetery and disrespect what that place is supposed to be about, being free of politics, stunts, and you know it and do it anyway and you're confronted with the fact that you shouldn't be there and you push the person out of the way, what is it that you love

exactly? It's time to revisit what patriotism is. You can wave the flag. It doesn't mean you love the flag. Not if you don't live what the flag is about. I'm Chris Cuomo. Thank you for being here, subscribing and following at The Chris Cuomo Project. Thank you very much for following and watching me on NewsNation, 8p, 11p, every weekday night. We're growing.

It's showing. I don't like commercials. I get it. Join the Substack. Join the Substack. Five bucks a month. Podcast ad-free. Long COVID.

From my doctor. Her treatment protocols. And understanding. Longevity tips from her. My walk and talks about self-help and things that I know but don't do very well. It's all there. Five bucks a month. Try it out. Let's get after it. Music