"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the non-existent testimony of two witnesses prove beyond a shadow of doubt the guilt of the defendant."
Even a lawyer with much less ability than a Perry Mason would easily get such a declaration laughed out of court. However, that is exactly the assertion that John King made on CNN's Inside Politics on Sunday when he declared there was something somehow significant by the fact that two generals (actually three according to the chyron) have remained silent on the Atlantic magazine charge that President Donald Trump called fallen veterans "suckers" and "losers."
And this is telling. Two military men who would have had first hand knowledge. The former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. The former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford are silent.
Wow! They were silent. What could be more damning than that (except for them not being silent)? Not mentioned by King but on the chyron below him as a silent former general was James Mattis. The interesting thing is that in his memoir about his time as Secretary of Defense under Trump do you know how many times Mattis mentioned that incident alleged in the Atlantic magazine? How about ZERO?
Another general, Pence adviser Keith Kellogg, tweeted: "The Atlantic story is completely false. Absolutely lacks merit. I’ve been by the President’s side. He has always shown the highest respect to our active duty troops and veterans with utmost respect paid to those who have given the ultimate sacrifice and those wounded in battle."
Even more interesting is that we actually do have someone who was present with Trump during the time frame in question who provided non-silent testimony which completely contradicted the Atlantic magazine smear. The Mysterious Moustache Man, namely former National Security Adviser John Bolton. Of course, that giant elephant in the Inside Politics studio room went completely unmentioned by King since Bolton's inconvenient reality check completely destroys the smear.
This reticence to cite Bolton on this matter seems to be a universal tactic at CNN which makes it no wonder that network is often correctly branded as presenting fake news.
