Trump, Cuomo are latest in politicians who have ‘rebounded’ from career-enders

“Our country is on the verge of a comeback, the likes of which the world has never witnessed, and perhaps will never witness again.”

That is how President Donald Trump described the American dream and the current landscape for the country. But he could have been referring to himself.

America’s momentum, spirit and pride has returned, the president told a joint session of Congress last week before touting his own re-election victory.

In the eight years since he was first elected and then re-elected, Trump was impeached twice, determined to be the “central cause” of the January 6 Capitol attack, convicted of 34 crimes in New York and held civilly liable for sexual abuse. Not to mention that he also faced criminal charges at state and federal levels, was accused repeatedly of past sexual misconduct and promoted baseless claims about Covid-19 treatments as thousands of Americans died on his watch.

Still, the plurality of Americans voted him in for a historic non-consecutive second term.

“Never been anything like it,” Trump said in his address. Historians have marked his comeback and he seems to be immune to most controversies that have brought down previous political figures or ended their careers.

Now, other scandal-plagued politicians, such as Andrew Cuomo and Anthony Weiner, are trying to accomplish similar comebacks. Both men stepped down from their posts after being entrenched in scandal. It appeared, at the time, their careers were over. But, now they are trying to be like Trump and return to politics. Cuomo is running to be the next New York City mayor while Weiner is running for city council.

“If Donald Trump can do it, why not us?” Larry Stuelpnagel, a clinical associate professor of journalism and political science at Northwestern University, told The Independent about the thinking.

Cuomo, then the governor of New York, resigned in 2021 after a barrage of sexual harassment allegations and claims that he undercounted deaths from Covid-19 in nursing homes. In the years since he stepped down, prosecutors have dropped criminal cases stemming from sexual misconduct accusations and ultimately never brought charges regarding his handling of the Covid-19 deaths.

“But I would say both Cuomo and Weiner have a steeper hill to climb in their comebacks, particularly Weiner,” Stuelpnagel added.

Weiner stepped down from Congress in 2011 after a sexting scandal came to light. He then pleaded guilty in 2017 to sending sexually explicit images to a 15-year-old girl, landing him in prison for 21 months. To make matters worse for Weiner, investigators searching through his laptop in 2016 found emails from his wife Huma Abedin, top aide to then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, prompting the FBI to reopen an inquiry into Clinton’s private email server days before the 2016 election.

Many have since considered Weiner a factor in Clinton’s defeat to Trump.

One potential advantage for both of these candidates is name recognition. The upcoming races are potentially a test to see if the old adage is true: all press is good press. That hasn’t necessarily been true if scandal was involved.

Historically, “if there was a scandal, people would try and stay away from that person,” but now that “seems to be much less of an issue” as people become desensitized to scandal-plagued candidates, said Tabitha Bonilla, an associate professor of Human Development and Social Policy at Northwestern.

Richard Nixon, for example, couldn’t have successfully won an election after Watergate, she said. “Now that we have this big example of a convicted felon running for president and winning, there just seems to be much more permissibility about people having comebacks.”

The New York mayor’s race takes that thinking to the extreme. As it currently stands, the two biggest names in the municipal race — Cuomo and Mayor Eric Adams — carry quite a bit of baggage. Federal prosecutors charged Adams with bribery and other counts in September.

Last month, the Trump administration sought to dismiss the corruption charges after an alleged “quid pro quo.”

“This is an incredibly unique race in and of itself, just given that the top two names on the list both have ties to negative things,” Bonilla said. She suspects the lesser-known candidates will emphasize they don’t have checkered pasts.

Trump, the political comeback pioneer, has aided some Republicans with comebacks of their own.

As South Dakota governor, Kristi Noem released a memoir in which she admitted to fatally shooting her puppy. In the face of heavy public scrutiny, she refused to back down, even doubling down on her decision to kill her “worthless” wire-haired pointer. Her political career appeared to remain more or less unscathed. Although taken out of the running as a potential pick for vice president, just seven months after these revelations surfaced, he chose her to serve as his secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

Trump has also provided a political lifeline for failed 2024 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The vaccine skeptic managed to survive being publicly outcast by his own famous family, admitting to driving around with a bear carcass and dumping it in Central Park and confessing to settling two “misconduct” cases during his Senate confirmation hearing to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

Matt Gaetz, however, didn’t have the same fate. The former Florida Republican Representative resigned from his post in Congress after Trump picked him to serve as his attorney general, leading the department that once investigated sex trafficking allegations against him. A Justice Department brought no charges against him, but he couldn’t escape the mountain of concerns and resurfaced allegations. Gaetz ultimately dropped his bid for AG, saying his run was “becoming a distraction.”

Perhaps Gaetz’s case marks the limits of a potential comeback.

It raises questions as to whether other scandal-entrenched politicians -such as Al Franken, the former Minnesota Democrat who resigned amid sex misconduct claims, or George Santos, the serial fabulist who was expelled after federal prosecutors accused him with wire fraud – could make a comeback.

Weiner and Cuomo are both Democrats and are unlikely to get a helping hand from Trump in their races, but they do all share something in common.

Trump, Cuomo, and Weiner have all faced sexual misconduct allegations. Only Weiner was convicted criminally, Cuomo apologized for “making anyone feel uncomfortable” but denied touching anyone inappropriately. At the time of the 2024 election, 28 women had publicly accused Trump of sexual misconduct. He has denied any wrongdoing.

“I think sex scandals have long been an area where the public has downplayed the [potential] culpability” of alleged perpetrators, Bonilla said, pointing to Bill Clinton, who was impeached but not removed from office after his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

“There is a tendency for people either to minimize what’s happened or to kind of pay much more attention” to the person-in-question’s other, more positive contributions, she added.

This phenomenon appears to already be playing out. Democratic New York Rep. Richie Torres has already backed Cuomo, telling the New York Post last week that he wasn’t interested in “relitigating” Cuomo’s resignation amid the sexual misconduct allegations.

“I predict the comeback story of the 2025 election will be the resurrection of Andrew Cuomo,” he told the outlet.

It’s difficult to piece together the confluence of factors that could have led to Trump’s comeback: Joe Biden’s delayed exit from the 2024 race. Kamala Harris’ standing as the first Black woman and first Asian American nominee for president on a major party ticket. The massive socio-cultural shifts that sprung up in response to Trump’s term — like Black Lives Matter protests or the #MeToo movement. Trump’s popularity among the GOP. Rapid inflation.

Maybe Trump’s resurgence largely hinged on messaging.

The Trump campaign co-opted the negative press and turned it into strategy. His mugshots were slapped onto Trump-branded merchandise and sold to support his campaign. He accused federal prosecutors of “weaponizing” the Justice Department against him and repeatedly branded the probes into him as “witch hunts.”

For Stuelpnagel, a particular quote often attributed to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels came to mind: “A lie told once remains a lie. A lie repeated 1,000 times becomes a fact.” Trump has essentially told so many falsehoods — amplified on the world stage — so many times that, at least to some, they’re now considered a fact, he said.

“Trump has been able to repeat, repeat, repeat. He’s had some very willing allies in the form of, most prominently, Fox News… and right-wing influencers who don’t do fact checking,” Stuelpnagel said.

To put things in perspective, after the president’s 99-minute speech to Congress Tuesday, the New York Times fact-checked his remarks, marking more than a dozen claims as baseless, misleading or exaggerated.

Cuomo and Weiner don’t enjoy that kind of round-the-clock news coverage.

To add to the information problem, young voters have gravitated toward getting their news from non-traditional outlets such as social media and podcasts.

“The mainstream press has really lost its touch with a lot of young voters. Stuelpnagel said. “He ran a smart campaign by avoiding the mainstream media and going to the so-called influencers who never really fact-checked him, never really challenged him.”

Different strategies and circumstances define the New York races for Cuomo and Weiner. The primary elections are held in June, when voters will decide if the two can unstick themselves from their past scandals or if “Teflon Don” stands as the lone exception. He did, after all, write The Art of the Comeback.

Referring to the first of what would be six bankruptcies, he wrote in the 1997 book: “There were some dark moments. But I never had any doubt that I’d come back.”