Just when it seems impossible for the mainstream media to embarrass itself any further, CNN jumps into action.
The network that treated the release of American Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl in a swap for five Taliban leaders like it was a national holiday when former President Barack Obama was in the White House did its best this week to smear what should have been a truly joyful moment — the return of American hostages from North Korea — with snide attacks on President Donald Trump.
But Americans viewing the disgraceful scene weren’t fooled at all.
For the men who were freed, there was no question about their feelings. They summed it up in a hand-written note they gave to Vice President Mike Pence.
CBS News Margaret Brennan managed to post a picture of the note to Twitter:
The power of those words sums up a moment of pure bliss. But for the CNN “journalists” it was a different story entirely.
Filling the time on air before Trump greeted the arrival of the freed hostages at the Joint Base Andrews military facility in Maryland, CNN journalist John Vause asked the network’s senior White House correspondent Jeff Zeleny if maybe the hostages’ freedom was serving as a distraction for Trump from the troubles that Democrats are obsessing over.
Will CNN ever give President Donald Trump the credit he deserves?
What does the freedom of three innocent Americans matter to CNN when there’s Russia and Stormy Daniels to blather about?
“The president is there,” Vause said. “He knows that this is a feel-good moment and there is some reporting out there that maybe, you know, Donald Trump believes that this success in the foreign policy field might be enough, you know, to distract attention away from the Robert Mueller investigation into Russia, the criminal investigation of his own personal attorney, you know, the Stormy Daniels affair …”
Zeleny, of course, agreed.
“There is no question that all of these weighty matters here are indeed giving the president something to focus on. The Mueller investigation is indeed alive and well, but the White House officials and supporters of the President actually hope he can focus on something substantive like the release of these three Americans.”
Naturally, CNN had a Clinton administration talking head around to weigh in, too.
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Philip Yun, an adviser on East Asian and Pacific affairs in the State Department from 1994 to 2001 and a regular contributor to the Clinton News Network, was essentially sneering at the events.
“Well, this is Donald Trump as a TV — TV moment for him. If nothing else he knows how to get publicity, how to a bleed a lot of drama. The lead up to this has been teasers through Twitter. So, this is very consistent with what he does and as was said earlier this is pretty unusual.”
Check it out here:
A TV moment? Trump knows how to “bleed a lot of drama”? Considering that the last American to be freed from North Korea – Otto Warmbier — was comatose, brain-damaged and on the brink of death, the safe return of these three American hostages in good health should have been an event treated as joyfully as the freed prisoners’ “we were like men who dreamed” note.
And considering that Obama staged a full-blown Rose Garden ceremony in 2014 with the parents of a man who was captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan only after deserting his fellow soldiers in the face of the enemy, Trump’s decision to meet three innocent men being returned at an airport at 2:30 a.m. seems downright restrained.
Social media users pounced on the disrespect.
That last one sums it up.
Ensuring the safety of Americans in a dangerous world is the No. 1 job of the presidency going back to George Washington.
The Founders gave Congress and the judiciary power over the country’s domestic affairs, but when it comes to foreign policy, the president runs the show.
And even Trump critics have to see that Trump is accomplishing more on the job — within 15 months of active presidential leadership — than the Obama administration did in its eight years of flaccid appeasement.
CNN can keep embarrassing itself as it did Thursday morning, but more and more Americans aren’t fooled at all.
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