CNN’s business model relies heavily on its talent antagonizing conservatives, the New York Post’s Karol Markowicz argued this week.
The “whole point,” she writes, is to attract the ire of the Right “because, hey, hits are hits. This isn’t a conspiracy theory: it’s a blatant truth.”
She is onto something. Consider, for example, the interview CNN’s Chris Cuomo conducted this week with Missouri attorney Mark McCloskey, who pointed an AR-15 rifle at a mob of Black Lives Matter activists this weekend after they marched through his private community in St. Louis and reportedly threatened his family.
The CNN interview is an embarrassment from start to finish. Cuomo ridiculously spent most of the 10 minutes berating McCloskey. But perhaps the point of the interview was never about putting tough questions to the attorney or getting his side. Perhaps the aim all along was to create a viral clip — watch Chris Cuomo DESTROY a gun owner!
“How do you feel,” Cuomo began, “about becoming the face of political resistance to the Black Lives Matter movement?”
McCloskey, a longtime supporter of Democratic candidates and causes, responded, “First of all, that’s a completely ridiculous statement. I’m not the face of anything opposing the Black Lives Matters movement. I was a person scared for my life, who was protecting my wife, my home, my hearth, my livelihood.”
Cuomo then followed up with what he must have thought was a terrific “gotcha” but turned out instead to be a perfect self-own.
“To be clear, did anything happen to you or your property?” he asked. “That night, did anything happen to you, your family, or your property? The idea that they broke the law, I give it to you. They went through a private gate. … [But] they did not go up your steps. They didn’t go to your house. They didn’t touch you. They didn’t try to enter your home. They didn’t try to do anything to your kids.”
“But you say you were assaulted,” Cuomo added. “You are using the civil definition of that, which is that you had the apprehension that something bad was going to happen to you, but nothing did.”
This is some deranged circular thinking: Because protesters did not attempt to storm a house protected by armed homeowners, those armed homeowners must not have needed their weapons. Has it not occurred to Cuomo that perhaps nothing happened that evening precisely because the Missouri attorney and his wife conspicuously stood guard with firearms? There seems to be a good reason why, of law graduates McCloskey and Cuomo, the former is the one who actually practices law.
The interview gets worse from there. Cuomo then asked his guest if he is willing to provide security footage proving that the protesters approached the attorney’s home. McCloskey wisely declined to divulge that information on national television.
The CNN host then demanded that McCloskey explain why President Trump shared footage of the St. Louis incident on social media.
“I’m not going to speak for the president,” answered the attorney. “In fact, quite frankly, I find it probably an impossibility for anyone to speak for the president. And that’s assuming one wants to say the president speaks.”
Said Cuomo: “I don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about.”
The host then returned to demanding that McCloskey answer for Trump’s Twitter activity. The lawyer responded coolly, “I’m glad you are a mind-reader because no one else thinks you are.”
That about sums up the entirety of this fatuous conversation. Nothing was learned, and nothing was gained. It was all just an opportunity for the host to ask stupid Cuomo questions premised on even stupider Cuomo assumptions, all of it apparently with an eye on scoring sweet, sweet clicks and views.
