Having been laid off in December 2022 from CNN, Chris Cillizza has been free to appear elsewhere, join Substack, and…come to his senses? That seems to have been the case more recently with one example having come Wednesday night on NewsNation as he admitted he was exasperated at Democrats being willing to die on the hill of saving the federal bureaucracy from Elon Musk.
On Balance host Leland Vittert set the table in his Why It Matters Memo with the admission that “Democrats are fighting – literally dying on the hill of saving three-letter agencies that everybody in America hates” even though “[n]obody outside of Washington once business as usual in Congress” and certainly not that “saving federal jobs is the civil rights movement.”
Noting the left is “staking out such objectively unpopular opinions,” Vittert presented as a foil a Health and Human Services researcher who spoke at an anti-Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) rally to decry her work collecting “better data to create better clinical guidelines for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex people” with cancer.
“[H]alf of the country right now is living paycheck to paycheck. Read the room. Gender identity studies in cancer care doesn't play well in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Clark County, Nevada, Cobb County, Georgia, Erie, Pennsylvania,” he added.
Cillizza excused members of Congress who represent the greater D.C. area like Jamie Raskin (D-MD), but those few members aside, “the average person who doesn't live in and around Washington has no idea what these things are and why you wouldn't want to cut some of the waste from them.”
He continued to dish out the truth (something we saw little of at CNN):
I think it's a fundamental fact of how Democrats are positioning themselves whether intentionally or unintentionally. They just have a blind spot with Trump. No idea he proposes can be even a good idea. It – again, if it was proposed by James P. Public, Republican president, they'd like, okay, well, maybe. But because it is him and because the loathing is so – and it is – I don't use that word wisely, but they hate him. Every idea is – is a bad idea and I just think it leads some poor strategic conclusions if your goal is, as Democrat’s goal should be, getting some power back because they're out of power at every single level at the state and federal government.
He noted the Democrats not only lost the White House, but both houses of Congress and, aside from hating Trump, they “don’t have a message” and “obvious leadership.”
This cued Vittert up to note journalists should find government waste the most basic function of their jobs, but that seems to have dried up. To illustrate it, he had Cillizza react to his former longtime colleague Brianna Keilar berate White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller in one clip about government layoffs while commiserating in another with a laid-off HHS worker.
Surprisingly, Cillizza didn’t back down from scoffing at this double standard. He went onto cite the Pennsylvania limestone mine for paper copies of government personnel files as something a former colleague at The Washington Post exposed over a decade ago (click “expand”):
CILLIZZA: I mean, it's aimed at a certain kind of viewer. I mean, you know, like – I don't think it's a – I don't think I need to go to det – detailed media critic to know that. Like –
VITTERT: The New York – no, like, journ – journalists are not good media critics, but The New York Times Daily did this whole episode today. That's your morning podcast about how, you know, purge is hurting all of these federal workers in there's not been one critical question of asking any Democrats, like, do we really need all of these programs that you're now championing?
CILLIZZA: – I – again, I think that if it was even Chris Cillizza or Leland Vitter, president, God forbid that be terrified, especially me. You, I could live with.
VITTERT: Oh!
CILLIZZA: If – we if we had that and they said, you know what? The federal bureaucracy is too big. It doesn't work. Well, everybody knows this. It's outdated. It's – it's not technologically brought. I think you would get 90 percent approve – people like yeah! Like, the whole limestone mine where they store the records – Elon Musk talked about this – my friend and colleague David Fahrenthold wrote – wrote about this in 2015 or 2016 when he was at The Washington Post. He’s at The New York Times now. Like, yes, anyone who reads that is like, wait. We’re keeping these paper files in a limestone mine underground in Pennsylvania? Like, that doesn't feel 2025. So, like, that to me is the issue.
VITTERT: It's all about Trump.
Instead, Cillizza, argued, even things like the limestone mine aren’t points of agreement because of “[t]he Democratic blind spot for Trump” that’s “cost them significantly” to the point they’re refusing to “say we screwed up” or truly “examine” why they lost.
As for the study on the sexual orientation of cancer patients, he said while he’s not exactly “ridiculing that,” if you consider “the priority set of the average person, that's not top five” and instead “am I putting food on the table” and hoping your car doesn’t break down.
Vittert closed with an astounding look at there being little difference in student test scores and skyrocketing levels of Department of Education spending (click “expand”):
VITTERT: I’ll get you one more and this is, I think, people are underestimating it. What's my kids education like? And you think about the Department of Education because this is where this is going, right? This is what Trump wants to ax next.
CILLIZZA: Yep.
VITTERT: This is what's coming. The Department of Education is responsible for a 1,200% increase in spending since it was created in 1980. But over that time, test scores have risen roughly two percent. The only constituency the Department of education has his teacher unions.
CILLIZZA: Yep.
VITTERT: And you know what? I will predict the Democrats are going to die on this hill as well.
CILLIZZA: I just – at some point, I say this about my own work. The numbers are the numbers. You can say like much better than this person or that person. But if that person has 180,000 subscribers and you have eight subscribers, the numbers are numbers at some point, right? You are what your record says you are. And I think when you say 1,200-point increase in spending, it's just like the health thing we talked about with RFK Jr. I think RFK Jr., candidly, has got a lot of beliefs where I’m like ehhhhhhh! But when he says things like we spend the most per capita on health in this country and health is our – our overall health is drastically decreasing, as a reasonable human, I am like, yes, that does not make sense. We got to stop throwing bad money – good money after bad, figure out what can we do better and again, I say this all time. Donald Trump was not – he did not say elect me and I will – I will do basically the same stuff. No, he said elect me and I'm going to shake it up. Now –
VITTERT: Well, I was going to say – no, he didn’t say I’m going to shake it up. I am going to take a sledgehammer –
CILLIZZA: Yes.
VITTERT: – and then I'm gonna burn whatever is left –
CILLIZZA: So, he’s taking a sledgehammer –
VITTERT: – and that’s what he’s doing.
CILLIZZA: – to it and people are like, huhhh? And I’m always like you can be unhappy with it. That’s your right. You disagree with some of the things do. And, frankly, I disagree with some of the things he’s doing, but you can't be surprised because he’s saying what he’s doing.
To see the relevant NewsNation transcript from February 19, click here.
