On Sunday night, Mediaite and our friends at the Right Scoop flagged another example of how fundamentally unserious CNN has been regarding facts and sobriety. In this case, CNN Newsroom host Ana Cabrera refused to challenge or correct far-left CNN hack and American Urban Radio Networks correspondent April Ryan’s claim that “police and armed forces” will be needed “to pull Donald Trump out of the White House” on January 20, 2021 if Joe Biden becomes president.
There’s been zero evidence that Trump would actually refuse to leave office and require action by the military or police, but such cockamamie assertions have been allowed inside Zuckerville.
Cabrera led into the segment by how “House Majority Whip James Clyburn did not mince words” by comparing Trump to Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Vladimir Putin and insisting he’ll try to remain President in perpetuity, regardless of whether Biden wins.
Unsurprisingly, Ryan’s crazy train started with lies, relying on the liberal media’s lazy and purposeful lumping together of absentee voting with vote-by-mail: “[T]here's hypocrisy here because this President has already used mail-in voting himself and he wasn't complaining then, so everyone sees what this is about.”
Whether it’s Trump, campaign aides, or White House staff, the liberal media hammer away even though the latter involves sending every voter a ballot in the mail (if it even gets there) whereas absentee voting is not meant to be a regular occurrence and only done after said voter fills out an application.
Cabrera didn’t step in, so Ryan continued by warning that Trump has been “trying to create doubt” as a form of “voter suppression” and, if he still loses, she expressed a desire to see “a split screen” in January of Biden being inaugurated while Trump is removed by force:
[A]nd going back to the issue of January 20th by the President not leaving, Maya Angelou said, if they show you who they are, believe them. The President has said before in many tweets that he wasn't going. He said it months ago. Joe Biden even acknowledged it and it’s real, so there's going to be a split screen on January 20, 2021. If Joe Biden is now going to be the 46th president of the United States, you will have him being inaugurated and — and watching police and armed forces trying to pull Donald Trump out of the White House. I cannot wait for that split screen.
As NewsBusters has repeatedly documented, it’s been a left-wing fantasy/fear for years. One can check out a small sampling here, here, here, here, and here.
Meanwhile, Ryan was preceded by Republican-turned-progressive Bill Kristol of The Bulwark, who also went down the conspiracy theory route (click “expand”):
I say it's one of the jokes you should take seriously because it's one of the tactics they could well use over the next three months....You could imagine September, October, some Republican somewhere says, gee, I asked for a mail-in ballot, I didn't get it, I think the whole system is kind of a fraud here in this state and what if there's a friendly Republican governor who says, yes, maybe we should cancel — well, I'm afraid, so sorry we have to do this. We're just not going to be able to count the mail-in ballots in this particular area, which perhaps is a Democratic area. Luckily, there are Democratic governors in some of the swing states...so I think the degree to which the President is laying the predicate for a whole bunch of efforts to not have an election in which everyone can vote safely and securely and everyone's votes could be reliably counted.
That can't be, you know, we shouldn't underestimate how important that is and think of the federal funding, a tiny bit of money, could $3.5 billion out of the trillions that they're now spending in the final coronavirus package, for election to help officials at the local and state levels, Democrats and Republicans and nonpartisan officials make sure we can conduct the election, have enough polling places, enough mail-in ballots, enough security for the mail-in ballots, and the Republicans are opposing that. Why — why conceivably do you oppose a couple of billion dollars for local and state officials unless you're sort of thinking that the shenanigans in September and October may help you?
If CNNers like Daniel Dale, Oliver Darcy, Brian Stelter, or Jake Tapper cared about facts and stopping conspiracy theories across the political spectrum, they'd call this out. But in reality, they either don't care or Zucker won't let them. And what a poisonous statement that is about our body politic.
CNN’s deranged conspiracy theories were made possible by (and thus supported by) advertisers such as Discover, GrubHub, Progressive, and T-Mobile. Follow the links to the MRC’s Conservatives Fight Back page.
To see the relevant CNN transcript from August 2, click “expand.”
CNN Newsroom with Ana Cabrera
August 2, 2020
5:37 p.m. EasternANA CABRERA: The House Majority Whip, James Clyburn, did not mince words when he was asked about President Trump floating the idea of delaying the election.
CONGRESSMAN JAMES CLYBURN (D-SC) [on CNN’s State of the Union, 08/02/20]: With that, I feel very strongly that this man has taken on a strong-arm tactics and I feel very strongly that he is Mussolini, Putin, is Hitler. I said that back then, and I believe that. I believe very strongly that this guy never had an idea about being want to peacefully transfer power. I don't think he plans to leave the White House. He doesn't plan to have fair and unfettered elections. I believe that he plans to install himself in some kind of emergency way to continue to hold on to office and that's why the American people had better wake up.
CABRERA: Now, the President drew widespread condemnation this week for pushing unfounded claims about mail-in voting as a reason to postpone the election.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Everyone knows mail-in ballots are a disaster. You just have to take a look at the last recent — take a look at New York City. Look at New York, they're still counting your ballots, Pat? Do you know that? They had a race, a small race, by comparison — by comparison, tiny. It's so messed up, they have no idea there are ballots missing. Thousands and thousands of ballots are missing. They think they're going to send hundreds of millions of ballots all over the United States and it's going to come out. You won't know the election results for weeks, months, maybe years after. Maybe you'll never know the election result and that's what I'm concerned with. It’ll be fixed, it’ll be rigged. People ought to get smart and I just —
CABRERA: Let's bring in CNN political analyst and White House correspondent for American Urban Radio Network April Ryan and Bill Kristol, director of Defending Democracy Together. Bill, very strong words from Congressman Clyburn we just played whereas you have Republicans like Senator John Cornyn, who have said the President is just joking. What say you?
BILL KRISTOL: I say it's one of the jokes you should take seriously because it's one of the tactics they could well use over the next three months. It's not just a one- shot thing, right. You could imagine September, October, some Republican somewhere says, gee, I asked for a mail-in ballot, I didn't get it, I think the whole system is kind of a fraud here in this state and what if there's a friendly Republican governor who says, yes, maybe we should cancel — well, I'm afraid, so sorry we have to do this. We're just not going to be able to count the mail-in ballots in this particular area, which perhaps is a Democratic area. Luckily, there are Democratic governors in some of the swing states, but not all, and there are Republican county commissioners and so forth, so I think the degree to which the President is laying the predicate for a whole bunch of efforts to not have an election in which everyone can vote safely and securely and everyone's votes could be reliably counted. That can't be, you know, we shouldn't underestimate how important that is and think of the federal funding, a tiny bit of money, could $3.5 billion out of the trillions that they're now spending in the final coronavirus package, for election to help officials at the local and state levels, Democrats and Republicans and nonpartisan officials make sure we can conduct the election, have enough polling places, enough mail-in ballots, enough security for the mail-in ballots, and the Republicans are opposing that. Why — why conceivably do you oppose a couple of billion dollars for local and state officials unless you're sort of thinking that the shenanigans in September and October may help you?
CABRERA: Yeah. April, I mean, that's a good question. If Republicans, if this President is concerned about the security of this election and the integrity of this election, why aren't they investing more to make sure that it is secure and can go forward without a hitch?
APRIL RYAN: Well, first of all, there's hypocrisy here because this President has already used mail-in voting himself and he wasn't complaining then, so everyone sees what this is about. This President is imploring and channeling a pre-Malcolm X with the words “by any means necessary.” He's trying to create doubt. He's now trying to go along on the bandwagon of voter suppression, something that he never wanted to deal with before. He was talking voter fraud when we all were raising questions about issues of voter suppression. Now, he's on that bandwagon. It's a little too late right now to do that and going back to the issue of January 20th by the President not leaving, Maya Angelou said, if they show you who they are, believe them. The President has said before in many tweets that he wasn't going. He said it months ago. Joe Biden even acknowledged it and it’s real, so there's going to be a split screen on January 20, 2021. If Joe Biden is now going to be the 46th president of the United States, you will have him being inaugurated and — and watching police and armed forces trying to pull Donald Trump out of the White House. I cannot wait for that split screen.
