Chris Cuomo’s coronavirus-induced fever may have subsided but the CNN anchor was red hot on Monday.
The longtime cable host, 49, had an existential mini-crisis on his SiriusXM show, lashing out at his lucrative primetime gig and blasting President Trump as “full of s–t.”
“I don’t want to spend my time doing things that I don’t think are valuable enough to me personally,” Cuomo said. “I don’t value indulging irrationality, hyper-partisanship.”
Cuomo said his battle with COVID-19 has made him rethink his values and question his position as a public figure.
“I don’t like what I do professionally,” he said. “I don’t think it’s worth my time.”
Cuomo then launched into a tale about a “loser biker” who confronted him on Easter Sunday for being outside his property with his family despite his coronavirus diagnosis.
“I don’t want some jackass, loser, fat tire biker being able to pull over and get in my space and talk bulls–t to me, I don’t want to hear it,” he said.
Cuomo said he wishes he could have acted like a regular Joe and told the biker to “go to hell.”
“That matters to me more than making millions of dollars a year … because I’ve saved my money and I don’t need it anymore,” he said.
“I want to be able to tell you to go to hell, to shut your mouth … I don’t get that doing what I do for a living.
“Me being able to tell you to shut your mouth or I will do you the way you guys do each other.”
Speaking about his job as the host of CNN’s “Cuomo Prime Time,” the Queens-born anchor said he doesn’t want to spend his time “trafficking in things that I think are ridiculous.”
Such things include “talking to Democrats about things that I don’t really believe they mean” and “talking to Republicans about them parroting things they feel they have to say.”
He also wants to stop analyzing the president, “who we all know is full of s–t by design.”
As a public figure, Cuomo said, he has to tolerate other people’s opinions of him — and it’s just not worth it to him anymore.
“I don’t think it’s worth it to me because I don’t think I mean enough, I don’t think I matter enough, I don’t think I can really change anything, so then what am I really doing?”
“I’m basically being perceived as successful in a system that I don’t value,” he continued. “I’m seen as being good at being on TV and advocating for different positions … but I don’t know if I value those things, certainly not as much as I value being able to live my life on my own terms.”
When the biker confronted him, Cuomo said, he’d wanted to respond, getting heated when he detailed how the guy “didn’t know the rules” and how he’d made sure to take social-distancing measures.
But “here I am in an almost powerless position against this ass—- because I’m a celebrity and he’s allowed to say whatever he wants to me.”
“And I have to take it or he’s gonna call the New York Post and lie about something and then I’m going to have to deal with it,” Cuomo continued.
The anchor then alluded to a caught-on-tape incident last August, when he launched into a profanity-laced rant against a man who called him “Fredo.”
“I have to tolerate people’s opinion about me because I’m a public figure,” Cuomo said. “I don’t want to do that, I don’t think it’s worth it to me.”