PHILADELPHIA — Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo accused GOP nominee Donald Trump Thursday of scaremongering for the sake of personal gain.
“The Trump campaign is marketing a great distraction, using people’s fear and anxiety to drive his ratings,” Cuomo declared on the final night of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
“[The GOP’s] message comes down to this: Be afraid of people who are different — religions, colors, language. Stop immigration and the nation will automatically rise,” he added.
“Republicans say they want to make America great again, to take us back to the good old days. What good old days do they want to take us back to? Before the Civil Rights Act? Before minimum wage and worker protection laws? Before Roe v. Wade?” he asked.
“We have a different vision for this nation. We want to go forward. They say, ‘Make America great again’; we say make America greater than ever before,” he added.
Cuomo was one of the first major political figures to back Hillary Clinton’s second run at the White House. In April 2015, he announced he “wholeheartedly” supported her candidacy, putting to rest rumors he would himself seek the White House.
“When they tell you we’re going to pass [the Trans-Pacific Partnership],” Cuomo said Wednesday, “they’re saying they don’t understand the damage they’ve done in the first place and now they want to extend it with TPP.”
Cuomo’s remarks on the trade agreement, which Clinton used to support before she opposed it, came one day after anti-TPP protesters heckled him an LGBT caucus event elsewhere in the City of Brotherly Love.
