If Cuomo Became Mayor, Would He Really Stand Up to Trump?

Behind the perception of Andrew Cuomo as “Mr. Tough Guy” is the reality: The former governor has rarely criticized the president by name.

Last week, 60 or so mostly wealthy Democrats gathered uptown in a Fifth Avenue apartment, chicly done in modernist white, to hear what Andrew Cuomo had to say about New York City, and the prospect, wished for by so many who had come, that he would be their next mayor. Front of mind was the question about what New Yorkers could do to counter some of the expected blows of the second Trump presidency. “He is the bully in the schoolyard,” Mr. Cuomo told the assembled. It was a characterization that critics of the former governor have consistently made about him throughout his own career.

“He puts his finger in your chest. And if you take one step back, he’s going to continue to put his finger in your chest.” As Mr. Cuomo saw it, the president was sticking his finger in the chests of prominent Democrats all too often now, and the Democrats were receding, problematically. “I can tell you,” he said, “having dealt with him many, many times, that does not work.”

The notion that Mr. Cuomo, in all his combative, masculine oomph, is the only one who can stand up to Donald Trump extends beyond the world of moneyed Upper East Side centrists, for whom it has emerged as a kind of civic catechism. I have heard Elizabeth Warren-loving Brooklynites make the same claim, however quietly — that management by way of roughneck efficiency is the only way forward for a city that can seem as if it has fallen into a state of chaos, diminished by the migrant and mental health crises that turned some New Yorkers into Trump voters in November.

The possibility of an announcement for a maybe candidacy has been dangled for so long now, it can feel as if we are witnessing a movie trailer in development for a movie trailer. Earlier this week, Representative Ritchie Torres, of the Bronx, said he would back Mr. Cuomo in the mayoral race — a race Mr. Cuomo has yet to enter but nevertheless leads in the polls. “He has the courage to stand up to extremist politics — both from the far left and far right,” Mr. Torres told The New York Post. “Nice” was irrelevant. “We need a Mr. Tough Guy.”

How much Mr. Cuomo would attack the Trump White House seems purely a matter of conjecture. Since the inauguration last month, he has not publicly criticized the president’s return to Washington, something State Senator Zellnor Myrie, one of several progressive candidates running for mayor in a Democratic field many contenders long, described recently as a “conspicuous silence.” When asked about this, someone close to Mr. Cuomo pointed out that he was not yet a candidate and that we would be hearing from the former governor when the time came.

Six months into President Trump’s first term, eight years ago, Mr. Cuomo was rebuked by members of his party for failing to condemn him by name. When the president announced on Twitter in July 2017 that transgender people would be banned from the military, Mr. Cuomo was attacked for criticizing “Washington’s directive” rather than directly confronting the man who issued it. (“Newsflash: it came from Trump not George Washington,” one labor leader posted on social media.) At the time, Mr. Cuomo said that he hadn’t found “nasty ad hominem attacks on a person whose cooperation is needed to help your state” very useful.