Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Monday continued to blast Republicans for an event over the weekend featuring the founder of the "western chauvinist" group The Proud Boys, comparing it to playing with political fire.

"It’s setting a fire in a field of dry grass and you can’t control it," Cuomo said in a conference call with reporters.

The event headlined by Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes led to a clash between members of the group and anti-fascist protesters near the Metropolitan Republican Club. Before McInnes had spoken at the event, New York Republicans, including Chairman Ed Cox and Republican gubernatorial nominee Marc Molinaro, called on Cuomo to condemn vandalism at the building in protest to McInnes’s visit.

"If Antifa, if any leftist group did anything criminal, if they spew hate speech, I condemn it,” Cuomo said in the call. “If they did the hate speech, I condemn it. But the act, the first act, was inviting a hate group to come speak.”

 

 

Cuomo, as he did on Sunday in a similar call, accused Republicans of seeking to use the event as a way to excite the GOP base ahead of the November general election. On Monday, Cuomo was joined on the call by Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Minority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins.

"There was an honorable Republican Party in New York," Cuomo said. “You had political differences, but there was honor and decency.”

Stewart-Cousins, who would become the first black woman to lead a majority conference should Democrats gain control of the narrowly divided chamber this fall, called the McInnes invitation "a frightening place to be."

"This is New York," she said. "We are all better than this."