Don’t call him Fredo!
A profanity-laced video surfaced Monday night showing CNN anchor Chris Cuomo threatening to throw a man down the stairs for calling him “Fredo,” referring to the fictional character Fredo Corleone from The Godfather films.
But the core of the backlash centered on one claim from Cuomo: that calling an Italian person “Fredo” was comparable to using the n-word — an assertion that had many Italian Americans scratching their heads.
“Are any of you Italian?” Cuomo asked the group of men involved in the confrontation. “It’s an insult to your people . ... It’s like the n-word for us.”
On Monday night, CNN also said it stood by the host.
“Chris Cuomo defended himself when he was verbally attacked with the use of an ethnic slur in an orchestrated setup,” CNN spokesman Matt Dornic said in a statement on Twitter. “We completely support him.”
The video, which blew up after being published on a right-wing YouTube channel called THAT’S THE POINT with Brandon, captures Cuomo threatening violence after an unidentified man approaches him and apparently calls him “Fredo.”
The confrontation appeared to escalate after the man refused to back off from his “Fredo” comment, insisting he didn’t mean to insult Cuomo. The man tells Cuomo mockingly, just after the CNN host compared “Fredo” to the n-word, “You’re a much more reasonable man in person than you seem to be on television.” Cuomo then warns that the two will have “a problem.”
“What are you gonna do about it?” the man asks.
“I’ll f------ ruin your s---,” Cuomo tells him. “I’ll f------ throw you down these stairs.”