The old saying is that "sunlight is the best disinfectant." But in this case it's more of a cutting through the camouflage. Because when legendary journalist Carl Bernstein named names in a Sunday night Twitter thread, that's what he did. He chased from hiding and forced the hands of 21 Republicans who were cloaked, stealthily criticizing Donald Trump while protecting themselves from his retribution and that of his base.

Bernstein reported that 21 Republicans in the Senate have “repeatedly” made known their disdain and “extreme contempt” for the president. Privately. Quietly.

"I'm not violating any pledge of journalistic confidentially in reporting this," was the promising beginning to a thread-reveal that did not disappoint.

"21 Republican Sens–in convos w/ colleagues, staff members, lobbyists, W. House aides–have repeatedly expressed extreme contempt for Trump & his fitness to be POTUS," he wrote, before then calling them out, by name.

"With few exceptions, their craven public silence has helped enable Trump’s most grievous conduct—including undermining and discrediting the US the electoral system," he concluded, with video from his CNN appearance where he also named Republicans by name.

"Portman, Alexander, Sasse, Blunt, Collins, Murkowski, Cornyn, Thune, Romney, Braun, Young, Tim Scott, Rick Scott, Rubio, Grassley, Burr, Toomey, McSally, Moran, Roberts, Shelby" he wrote in his tweets.

“Many, if not most, of these individuals — from what I have been told — were happy to see Donald Trump defeated in this election, as long as the Senate could be controlled by the Republicans. They’ve experienced Donald Trump and his dishonestly, and his pathological lying," he said on the air.

There have been attempts to deny or minimize the reporting. But as sunlight should be, this was fantastically piercing.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is being honored with an Emmy. No, that is not a joke.

The International Emmy Awards announced last week that Cuomo would receive an Emmy for his “masterful use of television to inform and calm people around the world” throughout the Covid-19 health crisis.

The news comes after Cuomo shouted at a reporter for asking questions about school closings, faced massive criticism for his self-congratulatory book tour during the pandemic, and refused to accept responsibility for how many people died from the virus in nursing homes. He even called criticism of his state's response a "conspiracy theory."

Fox's Janice Dean, who lost family in those nursing homes, tore into Cuomo in emotional remarks on Monday.

"Every time we see this governor celebrating himself on television, it's just a reminder of the people that we lost partly because of his leadership," said Dean.

The Emmy Awards aren't just stirring up a political cause célèbre by exploiting tragedy to benefit a favored politician of the favored party, they're telling every family out there reading grim notices and government doublespeak and coping with loss that their lives and their loved ones are just backdrops for sparkling TV triumph.

It's grotesque. 

Of Cuomo, Janice Dean noted that while he accepts his award, families across his state have had to accept the "caskets and urns of our loved ones." 

It is over those caskets and urns that the Emmy Awards have played pandemic politics and shown again the increasingly overt classism and Antoinette sensibilities of Hollywood elites. 

Frankly, the Cuomo family fits right in.