On rare occasions when liberal Democrats make principled comments, their fellow liberals can do little more than squirm.
In an appearance Friday on HBO’s "Real Time with Bill Maher," Andrew Cuomo, the former Democratic governor of New York, warned that an overwhelming majority of New Yorkers rightly regard former President Donald Trump's May 30 conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records -- a trial orchestrated by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, and abetted by Judge Juan Merchan, a Democratic donor and father of a Democratic operative \-- as politically motivated.
"And you want to talk about a threat to democracy," Cuomo said.
Earlier in the segment, the former governor had noted that 66 percent of New Yorkers viewed the justice system as "politicized" in light of both the Bragg-Merchan trial and an earlier trial brought by Democratic New York state Attorney General Letitia James \-- presided over with obvious bias by deranged Democratic Judge Arthur Engoron \-- which resulted in a $454 million judgment against Trump.
"When you have this country believing you're playing politics with the justice system, and you're trying to put people in jail or convict them for political reasons, then we have a real problem," Cuomo said to applause from the audience.
Maher looked deflated by the former governor's honest and principled observation.
In fact, while the "Real Time" host has anti-woke credentials, he remains a detached, low-information liberal wedded to the lie that the Democratic Party actually represents democracy.
For instance, Maher responded by treating the coordinated attack on Trump not as a Soviet-style persecution rooted in fundamental lies but as a mere strategic error by Democrats.
In the wake of the former president's conviction, Americans flooded the Trump campaign with record donations. Thus, a despondent-sounding Maher lamented that conviction as "the greatest fundraising bonanza ever."
To his credit, Cuomo did not follow Maher in taking the political expedience angle.
"That case, the attorney general's case in New York, frankly, should have never been brought. And if his name was not Donald Trump, and if he wasn't running for president, I'm the former AG of New York, I'm telling you that case would have never been brought," the former governor said.
"And that's what is offensive to people," he added. "And it should be, because if there's anything left, it's belief in the justice system, right?"
Coming from Cuomo, perhaps only an endorsement of Trump in this fall's election would have sounded more shocking than this.
That endorsement, of course, will not happen. Although the former governor made a principled objection to political persecution, he remains committed to the Democrats' false and tyrannical core narrative.
Adam Kinzinger, an anti-Trump Republican and former congressman from Illinois, also appeared on the panel.
After Maher complained that Democrats should have focused on prosecuting Trump for the Capitol incursion of Jan. 6, 2021, which the delusional host described as part of an effort to "overthrow the government of the United States," Cuomo agreed and even applauded Kinzinger, a former member of the House of Representatives' Maoist Jan. 6 committee.
"And good for you for Jan. 6," he told the former Republican congressman.
In other words, Cuomo is no friend to Trump or to the whole truth about the tyrannical establishment. Yet even the former New York governor could see the sinister motives behind those New York trials.
Meanwhile, his comments made Maher squirm -- not because of the catastrophic damage done to the justice system but because, in Maher's safe little illusion of a world, Democrats defend democracy.
