In a long-winded puff piece for The Hollywood Reporter, writer Jeremy Barr gushed about blowhard Prime Time host Chris Cuomo and how he was “fighting for his life on CNN.” The piece was filled with a load of gag-inducing puffery, but here’s just a few doses.
Near the top, Barr opined about the “trench warfare” of cable news and how “Cuomo occupies the ideological no man's land, somewhere between Fox News' Sean Hannity and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow…”
The assertion that Cuomo was anything other than an ideological liberal was absolutely comical. Barr’s evidence for Cuomo’s alleged centrism were the liberals who “get angry at him for giving airtime to Kellyanne Conway and hyper-partisans like Trump-boosting Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz.”
Back in reality, Cuomo routinely blasts conservative positions and builds up liberal ones. Last summer, Cuomo lectured conservatives about what it meant to be pro-life while later being mum on his brother’s (New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo) radical abortion legislation, which allowed babies to be killed up to the moment of birth. He had also made the argument for banning MAGA hat wearers.
“And he's doing a pretty decent job of it; his combative, ‘Let's Get After It’ approach has helped make him the top-rated host, with 1.3 million viewers, on the third-place network,” Barr shared his optimistic spin. It’s unclear where/when Barr got that ratings number, but ever since the liberal media’s collision conspiracy fell apart Cuomo Prime Time (as well as the rest of the CNN prime time lineup) has struggled to break one million viewers.
The next few humorous tidbits from The Hollywood Reporter lovefest, involved how his show was living up to the expectations of CNN boss and puppet master, Jeff Zucker (click “expand”):
By the time he launched his show, cable news was struggling to keep up with a president who could produce headlines faster than they could type them into chyrons. So far, Cuomo has thrived on the chaos, even if the ratings aren't where he wants them to be.
(….)
Zucker says Cuomo's show is "everything we hoped it would be" and wishes he would cut himself some slack. "He's way too hard on himself," he says. "He's a competitor. He wants to win in the first inning of the game. We're not even out of the first inning of this program."
(….)
As far as Zucker is concerned, though, Cuomo is making all the right enemies. "He never backs down from a fight," he says. "That's what makes him the perfect cable news anchor."
Given Zucker’s well-documented preference for creating television entertainment and conflict over factual news reporting, it’s not surprising the head of CNN shines brightly on Cuomo.
On a more serious note, the piece actually began with describing a SWATing incident Cuomo and his family were subjecting to back in January that forced them to sell their place. This author was once subjected to an attempted SWATing in college, so know it’s no laughing matter.
But on the same note, Cuomo had actually promoted political violence in the past. Again, last summer, the CNN host justified the politically motived violence of Antifa. “But I argue to you tonight, all punches are not equal morally,” he proclaimed. He even had the nerve to whine about how “there’s a lot of about what-aboutism and spin going on. And it's kind of sickening to me.”
He didn’t show the same concern for Fox News host Tucker Carlson when Antifa descended on his Washington, D.C. area home to terrorize his family, vandalize his property, and break his front door. But Cuomo will deride Carlson’s “pissed puppy dog puss.”
Without shame, Cuomo suggested to Barr that he respected his competition because he respected their success. “Who am I to shit-talk them? Any metric you want — relevance, ratings — they're kicking my ass. We are the underdog. I am OK[sic] with that.”
