Actress Cynthia Nixon continued to make rounds in her political campaign since announcing her candidacy for governor of New York by visiting The Daily Show Thursday night, where she took jabs at Gov. Andrew Cuomo and President Donald Trump for failing to make movement on inequality issues.
The former Sex and the City star, who is running against incumbent Cuomo, was quick to mention that Trump is responsible for the nation’s “terrible moment,” something that pushed her to run for governor and fight for the issues she believes in.
“I’m running really to address inequality here, to address racial inequality, to address economic inequality. I think that we’re in a really terrible moment for our nation in terms of the Trump agenda and the stage that he is setting for us,” Nixon argued. “And it’s up to us who are progressives and who are Democrats to actually seize this opportunity, and there’s no better place to do that [than] in New York state.”
Nixon’s mention of Trump is not the first time the gubernatorial candidate attributed her run to the president. During her first television interview on The Wendy Willliams Show in April, Nixon admitted that Trump’s astonishing election win also partly inspired her run. “The election of Donald Trump was a wake-up call for this country and if we wanted to see real change, then we had to go out there and bring it on ourselves,” Nixon told Daily Show host Trevor Noah.
The Democratic primary will be held Sept. 13, and Cuomo — a potential presidential candidate for 2020 — is running for his third term as governor. Nixon asserts that she is unfazed by the contender, for she argues that he has failed to succeed in tackling important issues existing within New York state.
She argued: “Our governor now, Andrew Cuomo, likes to say we’re the most progressive state in the union. How can he say that when for the last eight years we haven’t done things like pass the New York Dream Act and pass the Woman’s Reproductive Health Act? We have tens of thousands of people, largely black and brown people, sitting in jail, languishing, waiting for trial because they can’t afford bail … We have some of the worst voter suppression laws in the entire country in New York state.”
Nixon then took a jab at Cuomo, questioning whether his identified political party is valid. “How could you have been governor for eight years and presided over this and not have movement on any of these issues? You can’t call yourself a progressive and I think, frankly, you can barely call yourself a Democrat.”
Following Noah’s mention that Cuomo appears to be matching his stances to Nixon, the gubernatorial candidate explained that there does, in fact, seem to be a “Cynthia effect.” “He’s rediscovering for the first time the progressive part of him … We need real leadership and someone who is progressive, not just before a Democratic primary.”
After Noah mentioned that Hillary Clinton recently endorsed Cuomo instead of Nixon, the candidate explained that she is unfazed by the former presidential candidate’s choice. “He runs the New York Democratic party. He’s going to get all the establishment endorsements.”
After announcing her run for governor in March, the gubernatorial candidate for New York launched a fundraising page for her campaign and put out a campaign video, where she talks about growing up in New York and the struggles she has seen the state endure with health care, mass incarceration and subway transportation woes. If elected, Nixon would historically become the first female and openly gay governor of New York.
