BS BULLETIN
- Adam Carolla says Chris Cuomo privately complained after Carolla reposted one of his embarrassing pandemic-era clips.
- Carolla’s response: Cuomo “attacked people” during COVID and shouldn’t complain when those comments resurface.
- Cuomo previously admitted the public was given “bad information” about ivermectin — which he now takes himself.
Adam Carolla has a message for Chris Cuomo about those embarrassing old COVID clips that refuse to disappear: The Internet remembers. Deal with it.
Carolla says the former CNN host recently contacted him after the comedian reposted one of Cuomo’s pandemic-era “bad looks,” apparently unhappy that his old commentary was being circulated yet again. That did not inspire Carolla to delete the offending material. It inspired a flamethrower. “You said a lot of stupid s— during COVID,” Carolla said, “and I got a lot of s— foisted on me thanks to people like you saying a lot of stupid s—.”
Then came the part Cuomo probably liked even less. “Perhaps you should have shut the f— up back then,” Carolla said. “You attacked people, and now people are rubbing it back in your face. That’s how the world works.”
And therein lies a problem considerably larger than Adam Carolla and Chris Cuomo. The COVID years produced an enormous archive of television personalities, government officials and public-health authorities making extraordinarily confident pronouncements — while people who questioned those pronouncements were routinely mocked, attacked or portrayed as irresponsible. The receipts did not expire when the emergency did.
Cuomo knows this particularly well because one of his most memorable confrontations over his pandemic record happened in 2024, when comedian Dave Smith challenged him during a live PBD Podcast debate over CNN’s treatment of Joe Rogan and ivermectin. Cuomo told Smith, “I don’t like what people did to Joe Rogan about ivermectin.”
Smith immediately responded: “You did it.” Cuomo denied it. “Find the clips, dude,” he said. So they did. Within moments, the program played old CNN footage of Cuomo discussing ivermectin with Don Lemon. In the clip, Cuomo said, “Ivermectin? A dewormer? Really?” and declared that people promoting it “need to be called out and shamed.”
The live audience booed. Smith looked at Cuomo and said, “Dude, you’re being so dishonest right now.”
That moment became particularly awkward because Cuomo had revealed only weeks earlier that he himself was taking ivermectin. “I am taking a regular dose” of ivermectin, Cuomo told Patrick Bet-David in May 2024. Cuomo went further, acknowledging that “Ivermectin was a boogeyman early on in COVID. That was wrong.”
“We were given bad information about ivermectin,” he said. Cuomo’s own old comments provided Smith with plenty of ammunition.
During their debate, Cuomo argued that he had been responding to reports about people seeking veterinary ivermectin and maintained that he had been attacking misinformation surrounding its use rather than the legitimate medication itself. Smith wasn’t buying it. “You weren’t being clear,” Smith told him.
And Cuomo’s COVID history has other clips that conservatives have been replaying for years.
In March 2020, after testing positive for COVID-19, Cuomo announced that he would quarantine in his basement to protect his family and began broadcasting his CNN program from there. Contemporary coverage documented the arrangement.
Weeks later, CNN aired Cuomo’s dramatic “official re-entry from the basement.”
“This is what I’ve been dreaming of, literally, for weeks,” Cuomo said as he emerged upstairs and greeted his family. There was just one problem. Before that televised emergence, Cuomo had already acknowledged a confrontation with a bicyclist who spotted him outside at another property while he was supposedly quarantining. The discrepancy led critics to accuse CNN of staging a misleading piece of television theater.
Which brings us back to Carolla. His argument isn’t that every COVID skeptic was correct about everything. They weren’t. Nor does every mistaken prediction or policy recommendation prove some grand conspiracy.
His argument is much simpler. People who wielded massive media platforms to shame, ridicule and attack other Americans during an unprecedented national crisis don’t get to declare the statute of limitations has expired when somebody hits the replay button.
Especially when the replay button works.
DBS WIRE SOURCES:
- Twitchy — Adam Carolla blasts Chris Cuomo after ex-CNN host tells him to stop sharing his old COVID takes
- The Blaze — Chris Cuomo challenged by Dave Smith over ivermectin comments
- Fox News — Cuomo gets held accountable by Dave Smith over former COVID comments
- RealClearPolitics — Chris Cuomo: I am taking a regular dose of ivermectin; we were given bad information early on COVID
- Fox News — Chris Cuomo’s televised re-emergence from quarantine draws scrutiny
- CBS News — CNN anchor Chris Cuomo says he tested positive for coronavirus
