I’ve noticed recently that liar-for-hire Kellyanne Conway doesn’t seem to appear much on CNN nowadays, but I assumed that was because she is such a blatant, godawful liar that the network was sick of her. Fine with me; I want to reach right into the television and smack her every time I see her.
But … no. It seems, rather, that CNN falls short of the Trump administration’s high standards.
President Trump and his team at the White House are giving CNN the silent treatment, refusing to send official spokespeople on the network in what one reporter says is an attempt to push down the network’s ratings. An unnamed White House official confirmed the CNN boycott to Politico, but was less blunt about the reason:
“We’re sending surrogates to places where we think it makes sense to promote our agenda,” said a White House official, acknowledging that CNN is not such a place, but adding that the ban is not permanent.
CNN, and the New York Times, are the two most prominent news outlets to characterize the Trump administration’s obsession with crowd size at the inauguration as ‘lies.’
Since CNN is in the background all day long in my office, and the New York Times downloads to my e-reader as my first cup of coffee is brewing in the morning, I regard Trump’s hostility toward those news outlets as de facto affirmation of my good judgment.
But there is a worrisome aspect to this, too; Trump means to break the press to his narrative, and to injure — destroy, if he can — anybody that doesn’t parrot his lies. We need the press more than ever, and we need for it to be courageous. It’s important that we support them.