U.S. Senator Martha McSally (R-AZ) created a firestorm of controversy this week when she called CNN reporter Manu Raju “a liberal hack.” Raju was trying to interview McSally about the upcoming impeachment trial, but the Arizona Senator told him that “I’m not talking to you.”
McSally is a former fighter pilot who certainly knows how to hit targets. In this regard, her comments hit the media target perfectly and were especially appropriate.
Raju and his CNN colleagues are all “liberal hacks.” Other than an occasional token conservative analyst or guest, the entire CNN roster of producers and on-air talent, including all the network’s hosts, is composed of steadfast liberals, progressives and socialists. In fact, one of their major personalities is Van Jones, a self-proclaimed communist.
Other Republican officeholders should follow McSally’s lead and refuse to appear on CNN. As tweeted by U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), CNN media personalities are not real “journalists.” He noted that they “relentlessly attack every Republican” and “always, always push the prevailing Dem narrative of the moment.” Clearly, Republicans, especially pro-Trump conservatives, will never get fair coverage for CNN is a tool of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
As evidence, this week, CNN hosted a Democratic presidential debate that heavily publicized a dispute between U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT). The network’s anchors and reporters spent several days trying to help Warren by trumpeting her allegations that Sanders supposedly told her in a 2018 private conversation that a woman cannot get elected President.
Even though Sanders denies making that statement and said many years ago that a woman should be elected President, CNN’s on-air personalities have been clearly taking the side of Warren. It seems the DNC leadership is once again trying to destroy the candidacy of Sanders, so, like loyal party members, CNN is doing their dirty work. The DNC fears that as a proud socialist Sanders is too far to the ideological left for millions of mainstream American voters and is unelectable in the 2020 general election.
This CNN and DNC attack should feel very familiar to Bernie Sanders. In 2016, CNN played a role in helping Hillary Clinton win the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Their political analyst at the time, Donna Brazile, gave Clinton advance notice of debate questions that were not provided to Sanders.
As the 2020 election cycle begins, the ties between CNN and the DNC are especially tight. Incredibly, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer said that McSally should apologize for her comments about Raju. He said that the Senator's comments were “disgusting, it was awful” and, according to Blitzer, Senator McSally, “should know better.” Blitzer lauded Raju as “one of the most respected congressional reporters up on Capitol Hill.”
While CNN expressed their extreme outrage at McSally’s comments, she refused to buckle under the criticism. She said, “these CNN reporters, so there’s many of them around the capital, they are so biased, they are so in cahoots with the Democrats, they so can’t stand the president, and they run around trying to chase Republicans and ask trapping questions.” They are so biased that McSally quipped the network “should probably be filing FEC reports with the DNC.”
Leftwing bias afflicts all the CNN hosts, including Brian Stelter, their Chief Media Correspondent and host of ReliableSources. He just announced his participation as Executive Producer in an HBO documentary on “fake news.” It will be titled After Truth: Disinformation and the Cost of Fake News. This is quite ironic, for Stelter certainly knows “fake news” very well as he has been peddling it at CNN throughout his career.
In recent years, CNN has been forced to apologize many times for false reporting on President Donald Trump. Their “fake news” coverage also extends to others considered to be Trump supporters. The network just announced that it settled a lawsuit with Nick Sandmann, a Covington Catholic High School student from Kentucky, who was falsely accused of mistreating and racially harassing Nathan Phillips, a Native American activist, at a pro-life rally last year. The amount of the payment was not revealed but by settling the lawsuit instead of fighting it, CNN admitted its role in falsely portraying Sandmann. He was targeted by the network and other liberal media outlets for having the audacity to wear a “Make America Great Again” hat.
Today, CNN is a joke of a network with poor ratings and pitiful shows. It is a far cry from their heyday in the 1980’s, when it was a respected news network. Congrats to Senator McSally for having the guts to tell the truth about a reporter who represents a network that no longer represents truth in journalism.
Jeff Crouere is a native New Orleanian and his award winning program, “Ringside Politics,” airs locally at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and at 10:00 p.m. Sundays on PBS affiliate WLAE-TV, Channel 32, and from 7-11 a.m. weekdays on WGSO 990-AM & www.Wgso.com. He is a political columnist, the author of America's Last Chance and provides regular commentaries on the Jeff Crouere YouTube channel and on www.JeffCrouere.com. For more information, email him at jeff@jeffcrouere.com