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Andrew Cuomo on President Trump: 'If I wasn't governor of New York, I would have decked him. Period.'
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images (left); Photo by JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images (right)

Andrew Cuomo on President Trump: 'If I wasn't governor of New York, I would have decked him. Period.'

Cuomo boasted to Howard Stern

Machismo appears to run in the Cuomo clan.

Of course there's weightlifting CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, who in 2019 threatened to throw a guy down a flight of stairs for calling him "Fredo" — a reference to the weak brother in "The Godfather."

"Punk ass bitches from the right call me Fredo," Cuomo hollered at the man, noting that to Italians "it's a f***ing insult" and "like the N-word for us."

"If you want to play then we'll f***ing play," he added.

Here's the clip. (Content warning: Language):

Naturally, folks far and wide piled on since then and repeated the "Fredo" slight — including President Donald Trump earlier this year:

"@CNN should move Fredo back to the morning slot," the president tweeted in July. "He was rewarded for bad ratings with a much better time slot — and again got really bad ratings. Getting totally trounced by @FoxNews. Give him another shot in the morning. He would easily beat Morning Joe's poorly rated show!"

Chris' big brother steps in

Well, that apparently didn't sit well with Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who told radio host Howard Stern on Monday he wanted to punch Trump's lights out over his "Fredo" dig directed toward his younger brother.

"If I wasn't governor of New York, I would have decked him. Period," the elder Cuomo told Stern, according to USA Today. "I mean he was attacking me, he was attacking my family, he was anti-Italian. Every nasty thing."

The governor added, "Take away that word 'governor' for 24 hours, I would have had a field day with him," the paper said.

More from USA Today:

Cuomo and Trump are both tough-talking Queens natives who have known each other for decades.

And they talked regularly when the COVID pandemic struck New York. Cuomo estimated he probably talked to Trump 50 to 100 times during the initial crisis, including a visit in April to the White House.

So Stern asked Cuomo if he ever asked the president about the personal attacks. Chris Cuomo has also been a critic of Trump on his CNN show, which his older brother has regularly appeared.

The elder Cuomo said he viewed the attacks on Chris as directed at him through his brother, saying he had the "added fraternal guilt of having my brother hurt because the guy wanted to hurt me."

Andrew Cuomo told Stern he brought up the issue with Trump during a White House visit, the paper said.

"I said to him, 'You want to attack me, attack me. I don't have a problem with that. But why are you bringing my family into it? Why are you bringing my brother into it? He's just doing his job. He's a journalist. And that's what they do. He asks tough questions,'" he recalled to the radio host, USA Today said.

The governor claimed the message fell on deaf ears.

"But Trump, he has such a fragile personality. He cannot take any criticism. It's beyond thin-skinned ..." Andrew Cuomo also told Stern, according to the paper. "He's so emotionally fragile and desperate for affirmation. Any criticism, even if it's purely factual, he goes crazy, and you can't talk to him."

Anything else?

It wasn't the first time Andrew Cuomo talked tough in regard to Trump.

In early September, he stated that Trump "better have an army if he thinks he's gonna walk down the street in New York. New Yorkers don't want to have anything to do with him."

The governor's declaration came after Trump announced he would look into slashing federal funds to New York City and other cities experiencing recent crime surges.

"He can't have enough bodyguards to walk through New York City, people don't want to have anything to do with him," Cuomo said in a press briefing, as reported in the New York Post.

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