The White House Just Declared War on CNN

Photo credit: MSNBC
Photo credit: MSNBC

From Esquire

Good god, if you missed Tuesday's White House briefing, you should consider yourself lucky because you have bought yourself a few hours respite from the increasing pile of evidence that everything and everyone is doomed. First, it's Energy Week in the White House! (Maybe the president* will walk the course instead of driving his golf cart places where golf carts shouldn't go.) In honor of Energy Week, they trotted out Energy Secretary Rick Perry to field a few questions. This went in pretty much the Rick Perryish way you would expect things to go.

Sic:

One of the things we want to do at DOE is to make nuclear energy cool again. You remember when we were kids, in the Sixties, a lot of kids wanted to go into the nuclear energy field. We need as a country to bring us to that place where nuclear energy is part of a portfolio and to be able to sell it in great truthfulness and honesty about what it can add to America.

Then I tripped over a loose conjunction in one of those sentences and fell down, so I missed the rest of the answer. Secretary Goodhair also explained that he has not yet asked the president* if the president* believes the science behind the climate crisis. This made me feel not much better.

But the real moment came when some guy from Breitbart asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders about the recent dust-up between the White House and CNN, and the ensuing firings at the latter, and this is what the official White House spokesperson said in reply:

I think it's the constant barrage of fake news directed at this president that has garnered a lot of his frustration. You point to that report. There are multiple other instances where that outlet that you referenced has been repeatedly wrong and has been had to point that out or be corrected. There's a video circulating now, whether it's accurate or not, I don't know, but I would encourage everybody in this room and, frankly, everybody across the country, to take a look at it. I think if it is accurate, I think it's a disgrace to all of media, to all of journalism. I think that we have gone to a place where, if the media can't be trusted to report the news, then that's a dangerous place for America. I think if that's the place that certain outlets are going, particularly for the purposes of spiking ratings, I think that's even more scary, and certainly more disgraceful.

In case you missed it, the White House just declared war on CNN. (Odd, because, if it weren't for executives seeking to spike ratings, Donald Trump would be back haunting dressing rooms at the Miss Universe pageant and Sarah Huckabee Sanders would be on the 700 Club, hawking Jesus by the pound.) Moreover, it did so by having the White House officially endorse James O'Keefe's latest preposterous ratfcking project. What's next? Sarah Huckabee Sanders beginning the next briefing with, "But first, a word about Alex Jones and his magical brain pills"?

It's CNN's obligation to fight back on this, hard. Time to cut loose Jeffrey Lord. Time for Jeff Zucker to stop worrying about what the president* and the White House think of him. Time for the network to be as cutthroat as the administration that is trying to destroy it.

James O'Keefe, shilled from the White House podium.

I may have lived too long.

Update: Brian Karem of The Sentinel has had enough:

Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page.

You Might Also Like