Keeping her habit intact of assembling conservative-free panels, CNN This Morning host Audie Cornish's guests today were CNN's oh-so-serious Stephen Collinson, Washington Post reporter Sabrina Rodriguez, and Cari Champion, a CNN contributor who's also the host of the "Naked Sports" podcast.
The target was Trump's moves to shut down the Department of Education. There were clips of a teachers union boss, a school principal, and the Dem Lt. Gov. of Kentucky, all bewailing what would happen. Unsurprisingly, no clips from conservative activists applauding the end of the Department of Education's efforts to inject leftist ideology into school curricula, and to use its budget to fund leftist NGOs.
The panelists then took their shots at the impending shuttering.
Cornish even managed to work in a clip of Lisa Murkowski [speaking of herself in the third person], kvetching that Musk might take the next billion he makes from Starlink to finance a primary against her.
Champion got off the segment's most unintentionally amusing comments. She actually recycled the tired cliché of describing the situation as something out of The Handmaid's Tale, because no one supposedly dares talk about what Trump has been doing.
LOL: no one is talking about it? It's precisely what the liberal media has been doing virtually non-stop. It's what Champion and the rest of the panel were doing today: hello?!
Collinson felt Murkowski's pain: "I think intimidation works. It's the new Republican party. The old Republican Party was people like Lisa Murkowski. The new Republican Party is Elon Musk and Donald Trump, and that's just the way it's going to be." This is kind of funny, because the Alaska senator's voting record since 2017 is less than half-conservative.
Cornish and Champion were peeved at Musk's ability to get his message out. Ah yes, the liberal media's nostalgia for the good old days, when they monopolized news sources!
Champion did say one thing that was indisputably true, observing that people in other countries don't understand what's happening, she added, "and neither do I."
Evidently!
Here's the transcript.
CNN This Morning
3/20/25
6:02 am EDTAUDIE CORNISH: Earlier this month, the agency said it was getting rid of about half of its workforce. Teachers and unions say this is going to affect the most vulnerable students.
TEACHERS UNION PRESIDENT: When they are attacking the Department of Education, they are attacking our students, and we are not going to stand for them.
ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PRINCIPAL: Educational opportunity is not government waste. It's something that is very central to what makes America great.
JACQUELINE COLEMAN [KY Lt. Gov.]: I think that these kids deserve the moon. And if there's any cuts that can be made to make government more efficient, shouldn't be on the backs of special education students.
CORNISH: Joining me now to discuss, Stephen Collinson, CNN Politics senior reporter, Carrie Champion, CNN contributor and host of Naked Sports with Carrie Champion, and Sabrina Rodriguez, national political reporter for The Washington Post.
So, Sabrina, we actually heard from a union leader there. Are you starting to see any movement or conversation among parents groups, students groups, like, the people who will be affected by the laws that the U.S. Department of Education kind of enforces.
SABRINA RODRIGUEZ: Absolutely. I think right now there's a lot of anxiety around what exactly is going to happen here.
. . .
STEPHEN COLLINSON: The president is doing something that Republican presidents have said ever since Ronald Reagan that they want to do.
CORNISH: Yes, I've been hearing this forever.
COLLINSON: You know, every time you go to a conservative political meeting, this is one of the big applause lines. The difference is that most Republican presidents thought that they had to do it through Congress, because that's the law, as you pointed out.
I think the big question here is what happens to programs for low-income kids, the disabled kids. The president is not being quite truthful.
CORNISH: Yes. Special education, bilingual education, although now that English is officially the language, maybe that doesn't matter.
COLLINSON: The states already look after schools. It's all these extra programs. And then there's the question of student loans. They say they're going to put it into the Commerce Department. If that happens and we get to the summer when all the new students are applying for their loans, there could be complete chaos if they don't do it properly.
. . .
CORNISH: Yes, so to underscore what you know, as we mentioned, it takes an act of Congress to do something like this, but obviously when you look at where Republicans are in the party, they're not going to be pushing anything too hard.
Here's Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, what she talked about this week when she was talking about working with Donald Trump and Elon Musk in this DOGE effort, even when they make cuts that she disagrees with.
LISA MURKOWSKI: It may be that Elon Musk has decided he's going to take the next billion dollars that he makes off of Starlink and put it directly against Lisa Murkowski. And you know what? That may happen. That's why you've got everybody just like ziplip, not saying a word, because they're afraid they're going to be taken down. They're going to be primaried.
CORNISH: Cari Champion,:ziplip.
CARI CHAMPION: Ziplip. Well, I do feel that way. I feel like we are, and I know you've heard this before, but in a real life episode of Handmaid's Tale. Everyone is just watching it and we're all asleep and no one is saying anything and doing anything. I'm just really so concerned about all the issues that are happening.
There is, when you repeat this out loud, to other people who may be, say, live in other places, in another country. They don't understand what's happening. And neither do I.
CORNISH: [Murkowski] survived the Tea Party revolution, right? She survived those previous events.
RODRIGUEZ: But we're in a different place today because we're talking about the world's richest man involved in U.S. politics. And he has no problem going on X throughout the day and launching attacks at lawmakers that he disagrees with, and has openly talked about how he will primary anyone that disagrees with what Donald Trump wants to do.
So, we're at a different point right now, because again, it's the information war, it's him on X talking about all of these things, and it's the fact that he has all the money to actually do it.
CORNISH: Yeah, Stephen, do you see this as haunting, this whole conversation?
COLLINSON: I think intimidation works. It's the new Republican party. The old Republican Party was people like Lisa Murkowski. The new Republican Party is Elon Musk and Donald Trump, and that's just the way it's going to be.
CORNISH: Yeah. All right.
CHAMPION: Sabrina, can I say something about what she said about the information war?
CORNISH: Yeah, yeah!
CHAMPION: What I find interesting about how they've orchestrated it, so if Elon Musk puts it on X, it goes from X to being retweeted by however many other people.
CORNISH: To ending up on podcasts, too.
CHAMPION: To Joe Rogan, to Theo Von, and the list goes on and on, and all the different people who are listening. And so the message is already clear who, quote, unquote, the problem is, and it doesn't always turn out to be him because no one's saying anything.
CORNISH: Yeah.
