People from CNN bristle when called “fake news.” It’s hard to feel sorry for them, however, when they continually peddle nonsense and do it so brazenly. Chris Cillizza makes it easy for CNN’s critics. He views politics through a lens of nothing but optics. It’s never about policy or ideas but how Cillizza thinks something will play out in opinion polls. As such, his work tends to be sloppy, as it was when he wrote about the gun control debate.
More recently, Cillizza published a blatantly dishonest piece meant to defend his colleague, Wolf Blitzer, and to throw shade at Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., over the GOP tax bill.
In the piece, entitled, “Bob Corker’s totally haywire interview with Wolf Blitzer,” Cillizza writes that Corker, “blanched at questions about his flip-flop on the president’s tax plan.” The article includes a video clip that begins with a visually perturbed Corker asking Blitzer if President Trump tweeted about Corker’s affirmative vote on the tax bill. Some crosstalk ensues and then Blitzer asks, “I know he thanked you for your support, but I’m just wondering if what you said in October, you still believe that?”
It is a crucial moment because it is where Cillizza frames the conversation. He writes:
Things began to go downhill when Blitzer asked Corker to explain his decision to move from a “no” to a “yes” on the tax cut plan despite the fact that in October Corker had said he would not be for any bill that added “one penny to the deficit.” (This plan, by all independent analysts, would add at least $1 trillion to the deficit.)
“I think at the end of the day, certainly that’s the way I felt during that interview,” said Corker, a response that was immediately nominated for the Bad Spin Hall of Fame. (This doesn’t actually exist, but it should.)
But that’s not true at all. Corker wasn’t responding to anything having to do with him changing his vote. Below is a clip of what Blitzer did and when watched in that context, it is easy to see why Corker got upset:
Corker made his statement about the deficit in an interview on “Meet The Press“, Oct. 1. Blitzer decided to bring up Corker’s Oct. 24 interview with CNN’s Manu Raju in which Corker directed some very pointed criticism at Trump, his honesty, and what Corker saw as Trump engaging in the “debasement of our nation.”
It is the interview with Raju that Corker took exception to, not a question about changing his vote — and who can blame him? What do his comments about the president from October have to do at all with his vote on tax reform? Corker rightly called Blitzer out:
Look, I know you’re having a great time with this interview and I’m happy for you in doing so. But, look, Wolf, I’ve said what I’ve said. And I’m doing what I’m doing, and for me to sort of rehash all of that gives you an opportunity over the next week just to replay and replay and replay.
Corker is exactly right. Blitzer wanted Corker to reiterate the comments he made about Trump at the end of October so they could replay it numerous times in an attempt to get Trump to lash out. Corker, for his part, did not take the bait.
Cillizza leaving out the crucial context that led to Corker popping off on Blitzer is stunning in its dishonesty. Blitzer’s attempt at creating discord between Corker and Trump is one reason people distrust the media. Blitzer was trying to create news, not report on it. For Cillizza to make it appear as though Corker’s issue was getting asked about him changing his vote on the tax bill is yet another reason people do not trust the press.
CNN should rethink their smug “This is an apple” advertisement if they’re going to continue to allow Chris Cillizza to publish such sloppy and dishonest work.
Jay Caruso (@JayCaruso) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is an editorial writer at the Dallas Morning News. He is also a contributor to National Review.
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