he wasn t really a politician at all. mario cuomo s politics were more a personal belief system. it was who he was, not what he did. fundamentally my father was a humanist. hundreds of mourners gathered to pay tribute, include former president clinton and mayor de blasio. joining muss and the daily beast s michael tamaski, who covered new york for many years. hello to both of you. let me start with you mike. you heard the current governor say it there at today s funeral. you wrote about it the idea that mario cuomo touched a lot of people because he was essentially a good guy. i think that s right. andrew s words there ring quite true to me from what i knew of
air rage, we re about to go into the fourth of july weekend. what happens someone s southwest flight is overbooked and pulls out a gun? it s going to happen at some point. michael, 60 82% of police chiefs favor a background check and yet in 2013 63 laws in 26 states need easier to carry guns in public. why do people want to carry guns in public so badly? you re asking the wrong guy that question, but, look, this is absurdity and it s the nra just flexing its muscles and just rubbing dirt in all of our faces and everybody else s faces and picking their spots and picking their states and saying this is what we re going to do and we ll do it just because we can and we don t care who is against it. we ll do it because we can and we ll show how strong we are and in georgia, this is largely a republican deal, but the democratic candidate for
georgia are just beginning. because of georgia s guns everywhere laws, gun owners at the busiest airport in the world which is atlanta s hartsfield jackson airports on one of the busiest weekends of the year, they will not be arrested at security checkpoints if carrying a concealed weapon. special correspondent for the daily beast, michael tamaski. let us talk about the utter absurdity going on across the country. it is amazing to me that the quorum of business interests and law enforcement officials is not enough to convince the nra that, hey, maybe some of these laws edge over the line. in fact, it s not just that, there s actual conflict. you have the business lob ney some states on the opposite side from gun rights activists over carrying guns in businesses and can the employees bring their guns into the workplace. we ve seen so many incidents of
business lobby is very strong, they keep losing on these bills. what about moms shopping in the baby aisle and we talk about swing voters and, this is a suburban soccer mom issue. one would think this is a political contingent that would support saner gun safety laws in public. here in new york city if you walk into a department store or carrying a rifle, you can rob it or something, right? in a lot of states people hunt more often and they re in public view and it s not as rare and the difference would be here in new york, but i m not sure that the constituency exists that is as powerful as the constituency that we re talking about here which is we believe we have the right to carry our arms wherever we go. let me ask you, michael because nick makes a point that there is a cultural divide and a geographical divide. what do we say to chris christie? that seems clearly a bid for conservative voters who are
partisanship. it s extra venom in these attacks on the president and the first lady, jonathan. well, it s extra venom, it s extra personal. there is in a lot of those comments, especially rush limbaugh s last comment, there is something really personal, very harsh about the criticism. look, presidents and first ladies are criticized all the time, remember president george w. bush was criticized for being on vacation all the time, a whole lot more often than president obama. he went on vacations, first lady laura bush traveled around the world representing the united states, which is what she is supposed to do as first lady of the united states, but, yes, i agree with you, that a lot of the criticism being hurled at the president go way beyond disagreements over policy. they get to a personal hatred of the man. all right. i m going to have to leave it there. michael and jonathan, thank you both for your time tonight. thanks, rev.