‘These people and their f*cking tree houses,’ Gov. Cuomo said of Jewish holiday Sukkot

Governor Cuomo reportedly made an insulting comment at a Sukkot event to his team during his 2006 run for New York State attorney general.

"These people and their f---ing tree houses," Cuomo vented to his team, according to a person who witnessed it and another who was briefed on his comments at the time," the New York Times article reads, with a spokesperson for Cuomo denying the comment adding that: "His two sisters married Jewish men, and he has the highest respect for Jewish traditions."

According to The Times of Israel, "Sukkot is marked by eating, and sometimes sleeping, in a sukkah, a temporary hut often built from wood and covered in tree branches."

Cuomo has had a tense relationship with the Jewish community of New York during the last year, where Jewish leaders called the state's pandemic-related crackdowns on religious gatherings "a streak of anti-Semitic discrimination."

A lawsuit filed against Cuomo last fall called the order to drastically limit religious gatherings in COVID-19 hot spots "blatantly anti-Semitic, creating religious-observance based color-coded ‘hot-spot’ zones directed towards particular Jewish communities,” AP News reported.