An understandable mistake. He meant to say one thing but ended up saying its precise antithesis.

The English language is a complicated thing.

Let’s face it, if people were prone to accidentally expressing the polar opposite of their true beliefs, you’d be constantly hearing from progressives how amazing America is.

Between his reliably terrible political instincts and the lefty base’s deep disdain for him, this moron as Democratic nominee in 2020 could get Trump to 350 electoral votes.

“The expression I used the other day was inartful, so I want to be very clear,” Cuomo told reporters. “Of course America is great and of course America has always been great. No one questions that.”…

“As you know, my family is evidence of American greatness,” the governor said Friday as he walked back the comments. “My grandparents came to this country as poor immigrants and their son became governor and his son became governor. That’s never been a question.”

Both he and the leftist elements to which he’s spent the past six months pandering question it. His point about his own family’s immigrant success story is a reasonably deft save, though, especially by Cuomo’s standards. He likes to go back to his personal history whenever he’s in pander mode, even though it too occasionally leads him into idiotic soundbites.

You can tell how titanically bad his “America isn’t that great” gaffe is from the fact that he’s still scrambling to walk it back even though Trump is grinding his face in it relentlessly on Twitter. Bad enough that he’d say something gratuitously that would damage his national ambitions, but to have the left’s most hated enemy twisting his arm and demanding he apologize — and then Cuomo actually doing it because he has little choice politically — makes it that much worse. The worst thing a Democratic aspirant can do is make himself look weak vis-a-vis Trump. (That’s Michael Avenatti’s entire political pitch, in fact.) Well, here you go:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1030419975692005376
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1030456820417081344
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1030458489070596096
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1030536210194882561

After absorbing that flurry of punches, Cuomo submitted. If he ever had a real chance a presidential nomination, it’s probably gone now. He’ll have to content himself with winning reelection in New York by 40 points or so this fall as the overwhelmingly Democratic state collectively shrugs. Ah well. At least the local GOP will get some fun stunts out of his gaffe en route. Exit quotation via Politico: “A Cuomo campaign adviser told POLITICO that the governor’s allies believe there will be no immediate damage in the race against Nixon, in large part because the remark would resonate with black voters who they believe will make up about a quarter of the primary electorate.”