Surprise! Governor Cuomo is now in Afghanistan, where he will remain throughout the weekend as part of a State Department–sponsored delegation. Cuomo, who spent much of this week talking about his vague plans to protect New York from terrorism and taking the train in the face of an Iraqi official’s flimsy-seeming claim that ISIS planned to attack the subway system, arrived in the country on Saturday, along with the governors of a few other states. According to The Wall Street Journal, he is scheduled “to receive counterterrorism briefings … and visit with New York national guard members deployed in the region.”
Here he is:
In a pre-departure interview, Cuomo told the WSJ that he sees catching up on global terror threats as a duty of New York’s governor, albeit one he’s less familiar with. “I know my job as governor. I know it. I know the Legislature, I know the budget, I know emergency management. I watched my father do components of it. I did it in the federal government,” he said. “But this is a new component for all of us. So I want to be the best-educated that I can be.” And, not unlike his recent trip to Israel, paying a visit to Afghanistan — his first — might make him look slightly more like presidential-candidate material, should he attempt go that route in a few months.
