The Hill media reporter Joe Concha reports CNN returned this week to its trait of getting snarky about the presidential candidates on screen. Don't forget that CNN airs in a lot of public spaces (like airports and bars) where the audio may be on, or off, or too soft to hear. CNN implied Gary Johnson should just get out after his failure on MSNBC this week to name a single world leader he admires. (I've suggested Beyonce would have at least made it less awkward. And think of the appeal to young voters who probably couldn't name a global leader, either.) It looked like this:
Concha wrote:
CNN has been accused of editorializing with onscreen text in recent months, running fact-checks for GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump but not his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.
Johnson currently has 7.2 percent support in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls, and he could take enough votes away from Clinton or Trump to make a difference in what is currently a close race; Clinton leads by an average of 2.9 points.
The graphic about Johnson appeared on CNN Newsroom during a discussion of the Libertarian's flub the night before with Hardball host Chris Matthews.
If Johnson were taking more votes away from Trump than from Hillary -- especially among millennial voters -- let's bet CNN wouldn't be this angry that the Libertarian is still running.
PS: The new episode of NPR's On The Media airing this weekend brings the usual liberal-media pain to Johnson. A former reporter talked about how as governor of New Mexico in the 1990s, Johnson claimed prison inmates were digging a tunnel, but when reporters got involved, they discovered the tunnel had been there for 10 years and was not made by inmates. It was a service tunnel in the blueprints.
