CNN goes wild over the incredible power of Trump's endorsement.

🚨 JUST IN: CNN was just FORCED to report that Donald Trump has a 95% GOP primary WIN RECORD and he just forced Bill Cassidy into the worst performance for a sitting senator in *80 YEARS*!

"Cassidy did worse than EVERY SINGLE one, getting 25% of the vote for a senator, in a… pic.twitter.com/jrzh6GW3Q0

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) May 18, 2026

"And this is sort of just going back through the archives to see how bad Bill Cassidy did. He got 25 percent of the vote, okay? I went back and I looked at every single non-appointed senator. This in my mind was the worst primary showing ever, at least since the end of World War II. That is how badly Bill Cassidy did. He did worse than every single one. Getting 25 percent of the vote for a senator in a primary? It's literally unheard of! And that is because, of course, Donald Trump endorsed against this guy.... When in fact you go against President Trump, you go in the grinder.... If you look at Trump approval rating within the GOP—21st century own party approval at this point in term two—he's still at 83%. That's more popular than Obama was with Democrats. Way more popular than George W. Bush was with Republicans back in 2006. So the power of a Trump endorsement is still sky high. And we'll see tomorrow if that happens with Thomas Massie."

A thoroughly idiotic question at CNN's California gubernatorial debate: Who would you want to play you in a movie about you?

This is just so terribly bad. It's also an unfair softball because it's so easy for the 2 Hispanic males. They both say Antonio Banderas. Watch the nonsense:

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If you're going to have a movie question for a potential governor of California, it ought to be something substantive about the movie business, but "California Gubernatorial Candidates Bicker and Squabble, But Say Little About Hollywood/The demise of a flagship industry drew little attention in Tuesday’s CNN debate" (Hollywood Reporter).

"I slept with the guy who created it!"

Jane Fonda on her “Block the Merger” pin, saying that she “slept with the guy” who created CNN and doesn’t want to see the network owned by Paramount.

Vanity Fair #Oscar Party pic.twitter.com/bNj93GuO8A

— Variety (@Variety) March 16, 2026

This is a rare opportunity to use my old tag "charming bad logic."

And I enjoyed the garbled articulation: "The murders are going to be bad for workers."

CNN insanity.

My screenshot from X, showing the Grok fact check that's easy to display:

 

And here's the whole video clip that should have any sane person saying That can't be right:

"You have to say that now...."

CNN anchor gets visibly uncomfortable when Nathan Fielder suggests there are moments when she doesn't want to express criticism to Wolf Blitzer given his prominence at the network.

 "We like each other and we talk to each other," Blitzer insists. pic.twitter.com/K3d4l9YovI

— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) May 29, 2025

"Trump to call for a 'revolution' in common sense."

Says the crawl at CNN, which I'm watching with the sound off. Lots of reporters in heavy jackets and scarves standing in front of various inauguration scenes — the Episcopal church, the line for humble citizens to get into the outdoor space for witnessing the indoor swearing in, etc. 

That "'revolution' in common sense" language refers to the inaugural address, and it sounds like an interesting mix of order and disorder... and also like a reference to the Revolutionary War pamphlet titled "Common Sense." 

The men of CNN charmingly circle the drain.

Anderson Cooper struggles to consume a shot:

They’re letting Anderson Cooper drink on TV again for New Year’s Eve.

CNN is getting desperate for ratings.

pic.twitter.com/hbZNY8ODUt

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) January 1, 2025

And Diplo — who's somebody, but I don't need to know who — calmly asserts that he's on LSD:

Diplo trips on LSD while appearing on CNN’s New Year’s Eve special.

pic.twitter.com/V9iauqF86B

— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) January 1, 2025

How are men these days supposed to enact the meaning of New Year's Eve? It's traditionally about drinking a lot of alcohol, but they don't want to do that, so they put on a little show of finding it hard to drink just one shot, and then they talk to a guy who calmly and humorously says he's on LSD and he's "not even lying." This stuff has gone viral, so credit to CNN. Do what you must. It's not the news.

Meanwhile, CNN brings out a representative of the opposite sex: Whitney Cummings woodenly delivers some jokes that have — predictably — gone viral because they mock Democrats: 

NEW: Anderson Cooper stands completely speechless after Whitney Cummings says Dems couldn’t hold a primary because they were too busy holding up a dead body.

“It was amazing that the Pro-Choice Party didn't give their voters one…”pic.twitter.com/EtxIcMKRXZ

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) January 1, 2025

"What happens on this show is so much more intelligent and thoughtful and deep than anything that's going on at CNN."

"You just can't... tell me that you sitting down with Elon Musk for 3 hours and then compare that to like Wolf Blitzer with all his graphics behind him talking for 30 seconds before he goes to a pharmaceutical commercial and then coming back and having the dumbest left winger yell at the dumbest right winger. Really? And you guys are going to act like you're the grownups in the room? It's just, it's too ridiculous.... So the entire young generation has, they've all turned that off.... None of them are getting their news from from CNN anymore. And look man, that's I think the most beautiful part of this election is that mainstream media's dead.... I don't think [CNN has] a show that regularly cracks a million views....."

Said Dave Smith to Joe Rogan (actually the words "mainstream media's dead" are inserted by Joe):

Compare this bit from the NYT "Daily" podcast this morning. The episode is "Inside Trump World as the Next Chapter Begins." Jonathan Swan says:

"The news media in the eyes of many Americans is discredited. More than half the country have tuned out the mainstream media. We are now in little information silos, so it's almost impossible to overstate how much Donald Trump has defeated the system and how favorable the current composition of the system is for Donald Trump."

Did Swan even consider that mainstream media could be the "little information silos" and people are breaking out?

I want the names of everyone who is covering their ass by acting surprised that Biden performed the way he did at the debate last night.

Biden beat my expectations.

I expected the CNN panel to spin for Biden, just like his wife did:

Jill Biden: You did a great job! You answered all your questions!

If: ba#^d gsu%*ruvh%@d dh*&@%uhs

Accepted as an answer so she's right pic.twitter.com/Pd883oI5SC

— Israel & USA forever (@israelUSAforeve) June 28, 2024

Those who have had access to Biden over the last 2 years knew what everyone could see last night, and they choose to gaslight America, saying he's just fine — he's very sharp. They kept him away from any serious interviews, anything that would expose his weakness, but they sent him out for this debate. My hypothesis is that the debate was a set up, and the panic response — reported by the CNN commentators immediately after the debate — was not sudden and emotional but a cold sober plan to cover up 2 years of lying about Biden's condition.

In the last few weeks we've been scolded about believing our own eyes, told what we were seeing were "cheap fakes." These were people using Biden for their own concerted purposes, and now they'd like to drop him. They would have Weekend-at-Bernied him over the finish line if they could, but it seems they decided to wheel him out in public on one big occasion, let us watch him for 90 horrible minutes, and then act as if they suddenly realized this man can't do the job.

Meanwhile, he is the President of the United States, and he will be for 7 more months. That's the immediate emergency. Beyond that, I want responsibility. Shine a light on those who covered for him and who faked surprise last night. How did Democratic Party characters communicate with CNN and how did the CNN panel hit the ground running, all on the same page, all with such intensity? I want to know. So untrustworthy!

The panic shows.

"CNN abruptly takes Trump campaign spokeswoman off the air mid-interview as network is set to host first presidential debate" (NY Post)(video at link).

CNN abruptly cut Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt from the air Monday morning.... Anchor Kasie Hunt pulled the plug just minutes after the interview got underway after asking Leavitt what former President Donald Trump’s strategy was for when he takes to the stage in Atlanta, Ga. on Thursday.... 

The spokeswoman... noted the debate stage would likely be a “hostile environment” for her boss – and accused CNN’s debate moderators, co-hosts Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, of biased coverage of him in the past....

In overreacting to the mention of CNN bias, CNN's Hunt showed bias. Now, we're all looking at this clip, and I doubt if much of anyone was watching whatever little CNN show that was. I had to look it up: "CNN This Morning with Kasie Hunt." But maybe that helps CNN. I believe the show has about 50,000 viewers, and there are sure to be Trump haters who love this plug-pull.

What's the difference between encouraging someone and egging him on?

I'm trying to read "Scoop: How Trump's team egged him on during CNN town hall" by Mike Allen (Axios).

The "scoop" is this:

Backstage during the first commercial break, Axios has learned, Trump adviser Jason Miller — as if psyching up a boxer in his corner or egging on a bully — showed Trump moments-old tweets from Democrats blasting CNN and saying Trump was winning.

It seems to me you need a foundation of expectation before you can declare something a "disappointment."

It's fake-newsy to proclaim that something you wanted to fail has indeed failed when it could just as well be declared a success. 

I'm reading "CNN leadership under fire after ‘disastrous’ Trump town hall/A furious backlash raised questions about the future of chief executive Chris Licht and the larger challenges facing the news media going into the 2024 election" (WaPo).

At a time when CNN has been struggling to turn around viewership decline, the telecast proved to be a ratings disappointment, with Nielsen reporting just 3.1 million viewers overall. That was a big boost over CNN’s typical 8 p.m. telecast, but a smaller audience than CNN’s town hall with President Biden last summer (3.7 million) and six previous Trump town halls carried by Fox News — calling into question both CNN and Trump’s drawing power.

Trump is doing a live "town hall" show on CNN tonight.

Let's see how the major news media are handling this story the morning of:

The New York Times: Media correspondent Michael M. Grynbaum asks, "Should a leading presidential contender be given the opportunity to speak to voters on live television?" Wow. That suggests it could be considered unethical to give air to the horrible man.

Joy Reid, an anchor on rival MSNBC, derided the event as “a pretty open attempt by CNN to push itself to the right and make itself attractive and show its belly to MAGA.” Her colleague Chris Hayes called the town hall “very hard to defend.” Critics asked why CNN would provide a live platform to someone who defended rioters at the United States Capitol and still insists the 2020 election was rigged. Those objections intensified on Tuesday after Mr. Trump was found liable for the sexual abuse and defamation of the writer E. Jean Carroll. “Is @CNN still going to do a town hall with the sexual predator twice impeached insurrectionist?” Alexander S. Vindman, the Army colonel who was a witness in Mr. Trump’s first impeachment trial, wrote on Twitter.... 

Politico: The headline is "Trump world booked CNN hoping for a big audience. Now, they’re in the thick of it/The former president will fundraise off the E. Jean Carroll verdict. But he also has to get through a televised town hall where it will come up."

How elite media is covering Elon Musk's dumping of information about how Twitter helped the Democratic Party in the 2020 election.

First, let me say, I would like a well-written, organized, comprehensive piece of writing explaining this material. Alternatively, show me everything — all the raw material.

Instead, Elon Musk directed us to the Twitter account of Matt Taibbi, and we were expected to receive a long series of tweets and to puzzle through it. Was that to drive massive traffic to Twitter? Was it supposed to be better all fragmented like that?

It certainly wasn't a way to get quick updates to news that was suddenly breaking. It's an old story: Twitter was skewed to favor Democrats. Now, presumably, there's impressive proof. Present the proof in a clear organized fashion!

Musk enlisted Matt Taibbi, so why couldn't Matt Taibbi create a readable document and then just tweet a link to that document?

"In case you're wondering, as I did, how my punishment for tweeting about Toobin compares to Toobin's suspension for his offense...."

"He was off air for eight months; I was off for seven. One month was the difference between punishment for jacking off at work versus commenting on the inadvisability of jacking off at work. On one hand, the people who made this call about me are gone from the network, so maybe I could let it lie. But on the other hand, many of my colleagues no doubt knew about my banning from air, but not the reasons behind it, thereby leaving the impression I must have done something tantamount to Toobining. I did not. I was told it was Jeff Zucker, now gone, who put this order in place and a deputy, also gone, who kept it there. I was also told I wasn't informed of the network's displeasure because I had just had a baby and someone in the old leadership thought I might be a 'loose cannon.' Not as loose as Toobin's.... In the #MeToo era, I have been asked to make public comment on basically every errant penis in the media, government, sports, and entertainment worlds, sometimes to the exclusion of everything else in the news, and at the expense of some amount of professional dignity. It is ironic that in shining a light on bad behavior, which is the right thing to do, you're still a woman on TV talking about penises...."

Writes Mary Katharine Ham, in "In the Age of Quiet Quitting, I Was Quiet Suspended, And I Can't Shut Up About It/On Toobin's wake, professionalism, and the lessons I thought we learned in #MeToo" (Substack).

"New ‘objective’ CNN appears to be making itself objectively rightwing."

That's the headline for a column in The Guardian by Arwa Mahdawi.

Earlier this year Chris Licht became the new CEO of the cable network and... met with lawmakers who had become wary of cable news and promised them that CNN was moving away from “alarmist” programming towards more neutral, objective reporting.... 

The way CNN is going I wouldn’t be surprised if they make Trump their new election integrity analyst next week.

CNN's new president Chris Licht wants staff to staff to stop saying "big lie" and just say "Trump election lie" or "election lies."

Mediate reports.

On a Tuesday conference call with management and show executive producers, Licht was asked for his thoughts on 'the big lie'.... According to a source, Licht argued that using “the big lie” makes the mistake of adopting branding used by the Democratic Party, thereby weakening the objectivity of the network....

That is, the problem is not the blithe evocation of Hitler, but the similarity to Democratic Party branding. To denounce the Hitler analogy would be to impugn the Democratic Party. Licht apparently just thinks CNN is better off looking less partisan.

"CNN's new boss, Chris Licht... wants to give personalities that may appear polarizing a chance to prove they're willing to uphold the network's values..."

"... so that they don't tarnish CNN's journalism brand.... Licht doesn't want to necessarily shy away from personality programming, especially in prime time, but he wants to ensure that partisan voices don't dominate in a way that harms CNN, a source notes.... Licht said he agrees with complaints from 'people both inside and outside the organization' that the network overuses the 'Breaking News' banner. 'We are truth-tellers, focused on informing, not alarming our viewers,' he said...."

Says Axios.

It still sounds as though journalistic values are a means to an end, the end being profit. If the overheated sensationalism and Breaking News!!!! alarms were working, would they perceive a problem to be solved?

What TV news do I watch? That's easy: None. I read the news, and if there's a video clip I need to see, I find it on line. No change to the programming could bring me back. I wouldn't even notice it.

"The shutdown is a stunning and ignominious end to an operation into which CNN had sunk tens of millions of dollars..."

"... from an aggressive nationwide marketing campaign to hiring hundreds of new employees to recruiting big, high-priced media stars, including the former 'Fox News Sunday' anchor Chris Wallace and the former NPR co-host Audie Cornish."

From "CNN+ Streaming Service Will Shut Down Weeks After Its Start/The new corporate owners of CNN are moving to end the new streaming service after a splashy debut" (NYT).

I don't think "tens of millions of dollars" sounds like such a big investment. It seems to me they didn't do enough. The biggest thing they did was entice Chris Wallace. That's a tiny thing to do. Let's not overdo what a failure it was. I wouldn't say "a stunning and ignominious end." I'd say a predictable and dumb fizzle.

What's tens of millions when Elon Musk is offering $45.5 billion to buy Twitter?

ADDED: Here's the top-rated comment: "Speaking as a retiree on a fixed income, how many streaming services is it possible to afford? Ordinary people with modest incomes are being shut out of good content due to affordability. For 40 years I paid for delivery of The Boston Globe and watched TV using an antenna. That was fine. Now everyone wants their money to read or watch anything. It is unsustainable."

"On the flip side, CNN engages in this partisan coverage filtering as well."

 

ADDED: Here's the WaPo opinion piece on that segment: "CNN’s Brian Stelter blindsided by co-author of Fox News study" by Erik Wemple. CNN's Brian Stelter was "blindsided" because the researchers who were expected to criticize Fox News proceeded to say CNN does it too.