In the 2 pm hour of CNN News Central on Monday, their Democrat commentator Maria Cardona came unglued about how fiendishly Donald Trump supports Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. CNN Republican analyst Alice Stewart staunchly denounced Putin as a murderous tyrant.
CNN then played a package of video clips (mostly from 2019) they implied were Putin endorsements. Several were Trump claiming Putin "out-smarted Obama" when he took Crimea. They hated that idea when Trump said it originally. The Almighty Obama is never outsmarted. (Angry Yamiche Alcindor was Exhibit A.)
Several of the clips were Trump saying he had a "good" or "lively" conversation with the Russian leader, which isn't really an endorsement. It's diplomat-speak. If Biden said he had a "good meeting" with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, would CNN suggest that is like endorsing a dictator? All this was a setup for Cardona to make wild statements about Trump's love for murdering rivals, and no one interrupted to say they can't air these false statements as a news network.
MARIA CARDONA: It is so incredibly ridiculous -- bone chilling, but not surprising, because clearly everything that you just played tells us what Alice [Stewart] just said as well, which is not just that Donald Trump is afraid to stand up to Putin, but that he admires Putin. And let's remember, during the whole arguments of presidential immunity Donald Trump had his legal team argue that the president of the United States could have Seal Team Six go after and take out his political opponent and the president would have political immunity.
That's not what happened. In January, Obama-appointed judge Florence Pan threw this wild scenario at Trump's lawyer John Sauer to test how expansive Trump though immunity was:
FLORENCE PAN: Could a president who ordered Seal Team Six to assassinate a political rival, who was not impeached, could he be subject to criminal prosecution?
JOHN SAUER: If he were impeached and convicted first.
PAN: So your answer is, is no.
SAUER: My answer is qualified yes. There's a political process that would have to occur.
Previously, we noted CNN's Jake Tapper didn't explain who appointed Pan, or note The Washington Post reported Sauer "predicted that if a president was involved in murder, he would be 'speedily' impeached."
But let's check out the even wilder second half of Cardona's remarks, imagining how Trump caused Navalny's death and he was even envious of it:
CARDONA: Who's to say that that did not inspire Vladimir Putin to at this moment in time, kill his most ardent opponent because he says, one of the most powerful politicians in the United States of America is not going to say anything against this. In fact, he's going to admire me for it. And who's to say? But in secret or maybe not so in secret, when this happened, Donald Trump didn't say, “you go bro, I wish I could do that here” and we need to do everything in our power to make sure that he does not get, Donald Trump does not get anywhere near the Oval Office because it has everything to do with the future of our democracy as well.
The CNN anchors just blithely moved along and didn't challenge any of this crazy talk.
