52 Comments

This is why I don't watch CNN. As I read this, I almost forgot the network and thought you were actually describing FAUX "news."

Expand full comment

They are becoming almost synonymous.

Expand full comment

FAUX probably wouldn't even have had George Conway on at all. They don't like their pretense at airing the other side to use actual smart well informed people.

Expand full comment

I don’t know if anyone caught this earlier today on Cretin News Network but our esteemed Senator from Ohio, JD Vance was on there frothing at the mouth about how the trial was rigged, that 34 guilty verdicts for a “ clerical error” was just preposterous and that the Biden administration as a whole is on a vendetta against Little Donnie FF.I could only listen to about 3 minutes of if before turning it the hell off.It is going to be a trying 6 months ahead for us”libtards” but as someone else has said sometime before, I’d rather be us than them.

Expand full comment

Vance is a disgusting character. I use twitter to lob his turds back at him.

I've come to like Conway a lot in the last I'm not sure how many months.

Expand full comment

If you think the MSM is bad, try the financial press that totally ignores the perils of a 2nd Trump administration as they ponder how he will improve the markets. As if chaos and civil war in the streets as citizens protest their rights being stripped will contribute to the GDP. Ignoramuses.

Expand full comment

That idiot Cramer on CNBC couldn’t find his toes barefooted.

Expand full comment

I eliminate the problem by completely ignoring the financial press. most of the time, I have no idea what they're talking about anyway.

Expand full comment

George Conway is a straight shooter, so to speak. Good for him to tell the truth to the "even balance" folks who are doing their best to elect Trump---not to mention the liars club activities. I'll say repeatedly JD Vance, Scott Jennings, and all the rest of the acolytes--and the raving maniacs in congress---who spout the trump line and ask which Democrats will be on the put in prison list-- are , just to put it directly, pure and unadulterated EVIL, not just bad. They may be motivated by money, protecting their children from trump mobsters, keeping their "jobs" in congress, and many assorted things, but whatever their motives, they are infected with radical EVIL and it will infect them for the rest of their lives. Does "Sen." Graham even know what truth and honesty are? End of Rant..... Time to write post cards, folks, and make phone calls........

Expand full comment

Lindsey does, he is the worst coward of them all

Expand full comment

He used to, but I don't think he does anymore. Like so many Rs with a national platform with whom we are all too familiar, he's lied so often now that I have little doubt that he thinks he's telling the truth, because through repetition the lies have become the truth in his own mind. Not an uncommon human phenomenon.

Expand full comment

I think chump has blackmail info on him. He's not stupid, although repubs are experts at lying to themselves

Expand full comment

not at all. but the most vulnerable of all to the phenomenon is, of course, TFF.

Expand full comment

Haven’t read any of the feeble Linnie’s comments on the guilty verdict!

Expand full comment

Bet he’s worried about what could be revealed…

Expand full comment

George Conway also did this:➡️ https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/5/23/2242427/-Ex-GOPer-puts-up-Vote-For-Joe-Not-The-Psycho-billboard-near-Mar-a-Lago-ahead-of-holiday-weekend

Yoga first…ohm..🧘🏻‍♀️then back to post-carding, phone-banking +++

Expand full comment

Yeah, I saw a photo of the billboard - love it.

Expand full comment

Love it!

Expand full comment

Thanks for the link. Great idea!

Expand full comment

🤣 A clerical error? Gotta love

Trump's defense for not

pointing this out and

absolutely grilling the 2 main

characters about the error.

One of which who is serving

his 2nd sentence at Rikers;

the estimable accountant

Weissleberg(sp?).

And of course Don the

Convicted Felonx34 could

explain the whole thing, if

only he had testified in his

own defense.🤣

Glad Conway ripped it on

CNN. He's part of the

Bulwark crew now and they

don't play bothsiderisims for

the most part or alternate

facts, which Conway has first

hand experience with. They

should interview Jamie

Raskin next.

Expand full comment

Waiting for one of this talking head hosts to ask a maga-nitwit “why did loudmouth trump take the stand under oath ? What was he afraid of??

Expand full comment

TV will become like radio, left only with right wing grievance blusterers. Folks are moving on to streaming where they can wander as they please and by doing so provide motivation for the creative folks. There are plenty of blogs, podcasts, YouTubes, etc. TV as we know it hears the death knell in the distance. They had their chance. They had a golden era. They blew it.

Expand full comment

I will just digress a little bit, but hang with me. I flipped the channel and came across the end of a Murdoch Mystery episode. I had seen it before and was gobsmacked at the writer who scripted it a couple of years ago. It was season 13, Episode 11, almost at the end. It was re the advances in communication in the early 1900’s. “The future is unknown, but indicators abound as to what it might become. Wireless communication portends the instantaneous dissemination of knowledge from all parts of the world. Knowledge will end prejudice, demagogues will no longer flourish, lies and misinformation will disappear. The matters and crises that shake us all will be dealt with intelligently and plausibly. All of humanity will be able to embrace their better selves. At the end of the 20th century and beyond, truth and knowledge will prevail.”

Well, and then came Rupert and the cult to take the place of Hearst and all that came before. An awesome future has been stolen and we are left in the dark ages - again.

Expand full comment

The future was stolen the minute the government decided to allow private ownership of radio stations. Everything turned out the opposite of what that guy wrote.

Expand full comment

From what was possible to the opposite of what was possible. You are right, I remember my b-I-l loving the heinous Rush. I heard him once at a gas station when I couldn’t get away fast enough. He made racism and greed popular with people I once had respect for. The “tea party” finished many for me and then along came chump. When all repubs climbed on board, our world flipped upside down. They are the thieves of our future. BTW, the writers of that show (Canadian) are a weird lot. Hope all writers aren’t suffering the slings and arrows that they do here.

Expand full comment

Yes, now anyone can say what ever he wants and it's deemed truth merely by being spoken. Objective truth has been made "small enough to drown it in a bathtub." Thus Spake JARL (just another republican liar)

Expand full comment

Love JARL, and reference to Grover. Italian writer Umberto Eco nailed it too. “Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when once they only spoke at a bar after having a glass of wine, without harming the community. Then they were quickly silenced. Now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It’s the invasion of the idiots.”

Expand full comment

so true!

Expand full comment

Eco is correct, and I acknowledge I'm out of my depth often enough to be at least in the rear guard of the invasion.

Expand full comment

Nah, you are the antidote

Expand full comment

The 'golden era' of TV, and pretty much of all serious *journalism*, died with this guy...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUMEq24tqtU

And that's the way it is, though Walter Cronkite couldn't carry this guy's lunch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8QR_FERgvs

Expand full comment

I don't know whether I complimented you on press "corpse," but it's perfect.

The other day, John Roberts--not the chief injustice but the Fux Noise "host"--tweeted incorrect information. He corrected himself but of course it was too late. However, I am reminded that he once was Dan Rather's heir apparent, and then he became a total abettor of treason. Or was he already?

CNN is the network that employed Rick Scrotum as a commentator. 'Nuff said.

Expand full comment

Thanks Tom. CNN used to be my go to network for news. When I was working on the east coast I'd watch three back to back CNN News shows. The began a rapid deterioration in 2022 and in a fit of temper I had my cable disconnected so haven't watched television in more than a year - haven't missed it either. If Zaslav is panicking over loss of profit he has only himself top blame for firing good honest news persons and insisting on lying to pretend there is anything good in the retrumplicans..

Expand full comment

Same with me & CNN. Now I hardly watch any news unless there is some major disaster happening. Most of what I need to know I get from reading all these great Substacks and the comments!

Expand full comment

every tim e I decide to check out CNN, it's like the Roadkill of TV News...you don't really want to see it because it's REALLY disgusting, but you can't completely look away either.

when Kasie Hunt was on MSNBC, I thought she was pretty and had developed that Serious Newslady Voice, but this shit is unreal...even more so when you watch the full version and see that schmuck do all the well-known I'm Lying Now behaviors...a lot of talking over the other guy and stuttering, involuntarily closing his eyes (which convey a slight edge of panic).

so pathetic...

Expand full comment

But Kasie is cute Tom, doesn't that count for something?

Expand full comment

I would like to be able to watch CNN for a few minutes as I flip channels. But they are Fox lite and piss on them. It is a rare to pass by one that can give five minutes of actual news without ads from hell, panel blather, and repeating ad nauseam. I used to do just fine with 30 minutes of Walter when I got home from work. Boy, have we gone to hell…

Expand full comment

News shows are not even close to what they used to be back with Huntley & Brinkley, Cronkite, Peter Jennings… when news was reported and opinions, were not

Expand full comment

Exactly, race for the bottom, led by Rupert

Expand full comment

If an air bus lands with only one wheel down and there's sparks all over the runway or if a big ocean liner rams into a dock or runs aground I'll turn it on, but otherwise not so much.

Expand full comment

I agree with much of what you say. I would like to add that Kristen Welker and Caitlin Collins have been through the fire and have come out much more skilled and determined. See Caitlin with Ted Cruz https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/22/politics/video/ted-cruz-election-results-kaitlan-collins-src-digvid

Expand full comment

I've been impressed with Kaitlin Collins interviewing growth. She holds people to the topic at hand.

Expand full comment

She learned her lesson after she got her clock cleaned in that disaster of an interview with Trump where she totally lost control of the event.

Expand full comment

She certainly did; that's what has impressed me. She learned from it and applied what she's learned.

Expand full comment

That's what I was saying...so glad to hear others!

Expand full comment

I didn't see the incident you write of, TC, and I do have some respect for George Conway and absolutely none for Scott Jennings. But I'm not sure how saying that Trump's convictions will help him because they were done at the behest of a Democratic New York prosecutor is a *lie*. Alvin Bragg is a Democrat; whether or not Trump's convictions will help him politically is an opinion. As noted, I didn't see Jenning's statement and have no use for the man anyway, but where, exactly, is the lie in that particular statement? Not that Jennings isn't as full of BS as any of his fellow party-line Trump apologists, or that Conway's rant wasn't dead on target on the whole and richly deserved by anyone who even remotely tries to defend or justify Donald Trump for... anything.

Hunt's reaction is to be expected, though absolutely NOT validated, lie or no lie. How many other talking heads have come on CNN and spouted the most egregious nonsense (what Conway said was not nonsense at all) with no pushback at all from the Head Talking Head who was supposedly in charge at the moment? That number must be something like X-to-the-power-of-infinity +1 by now, with J.D. Vance's running over of a lame-ass Wolf Blitzer with his Trump-as-victim-of-a rigged-judicial-system / this-is-the-end-of-the-country-as-we-know-it gusher of shit like an M1A1 crushing a bicycle being the +1 of the moment for me. Wolf should have howled; instead, he whimpered and simpered his limp-as-a-wet-rag protestations as Vance steadily blathered and gushed like an overflowing sewer.

The only use I have for CNN is their "crawl'. I occasionally hit the mute button and peruse it for tidbits of news while reading online. That's how I came across the J.D. Vance debacle noted above. Upon seeing Vance's mug (perhaps one day he'll join the inner circle and get a mug shot of his own), I unmuted the screen for a hot second, which was all it took to get the gist, since Vance's volume and output had Blitzer swamped lie a kayak in a hurricane.

Expand full comment

I would add some great and honest and smart people to watch that I watch on YouTube—Brian Tyler Cohen, Glenn Kirschner, Meidas Touch, Lawrence O’Donnell. You, HCR, Joyce Vance of course. Other folks can add whom they trust. They are out there. CNN is a shadow of what it used to be. During the tffg administration, the press got lazy and just reacted to his daily tweets.

Expand full comment

BRAVO! Good work, TC. I hope you write a book about this.

Expand full comment