At the Jeffrey Zucker-led CNN, they can be trusted to go all-out whenever they find a news story that they deem worth obsessing over. Whether it was the missing Malaysian plane or Sam Nunberg, CNN has proven itself incapable of covering more than one topic at a time.
On Wednesday, CNN’s primetime programming showed that with over 149 minutes pushing the Trump scandal involving porn star Stormy Daniels and another 86 minutes on other Trump-related scandals.
From 5:00 p.m. Eastern to 12:00 a.m. Eastern, the four CNN programs devoted 84 percent of its airtime to Trump scandals. The porn story drew 149 minutes of CNN’s attention, 72 and a half minutes on the Russia probe, nearly 10 minutes on White House staff turmoil, and almost four minutes on HUD.
CNN hosts Wolf Blitzer, Erin Burnett, Anderson Cooper, and Don Lemon couldn’t let this porn story slip away, but even that was too much for Democratic Congressman Jim Himes (Conn.) during The Situation Room and Bernie Sanders during Anderson Cooper 360 as both denounced CNN’s fetish for a porn star’s possible affair with President Trump.
Himes told Blitzer that “I’m not sure this Stormy Daniels thing is in way, shape, or form in the national interest” and that it’s “a really troubling and problematic thing” that Daniels is the focus and not the Russia investigation.
Sanders laughed at Cooper’s Daniels questions before informing him during the 8:00 p.m. Eastern hour: “[T]here are enormous problems facing our country....and what are we talking about over and over again? Stormy Daniels. Let me respectfully suggest that I do not think Stormy Daniels is one of the major issues facing our country.”
This left roughly 44 and a half minutes for a whopping 11 other topics, ranging from 14 minutes and 14 seconds on trade to seven seconds for health care.
All told, here were the nine other topics: Guns, Jeff Sessions in California, the poisoning of a Vladimir Putin critic, Dodd/Frank rollbacks, North Korea, a poll ranking Trump as the worst President since World War II, Trump’s Wednesday dinner plans, First Lady Melania Trump’s public events, and DACA.
The Stormy Daniels lawsuit is certainly a big story; it’s worth finding out what the President knew and when in specific regards to the settlement and hush money organized by Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen.
At the same time, CNN has embarrassed itself by obsessing over a porn star and giddily seeking details of possible sexual encounters between the President and Daniels (whose real name is Stephanie Clifford). This infatuation has come at the expense of viewers learning more about the President’s trade policies, new gun laws passed in Florida, and so many other worthwhile topics that aren’t, say, X-rated in nature.
While CNN is falsely accusing conservative sites of not covering (or insufficiently covering) the porn star with salacious b-roll footage, they have yet to publish an article on the cozy relationship between congressional Democrats and the anti-gay and anti-Semitic Louis Farrakhan.
