Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com is never so slavishly pro-Trump as when it's clearly following orders from on high -- Terry Jeffrey? Brent Bozell? Sarah Huckabee Sanders? -- to push the Trump White House talking point du jour. For example, we caught them last month in one blatant example, in which it generated two entire agenda-driven articles about a single question during the Mike Pompeo confirmation hearing.
It does the same double-team talking-point drilling again. A May 9 article on Gina Haspel's confirmation hearing for CIA director dutifully repeats a conservative Republican senator's talking point:
During CIA nominee Gina Haspel’s confirmation hearing Wednesday, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) took issue with Sen. Mark Warner’s (D-Va.) assertion that the attorney general’s legal approval of the CIA’s interrogation program was a “get out of jail free card” for Haspel.
Cotton also wondered how many votes Haspel would receive if she were nominated by former President Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton if she had won the election.
“In fact, if you had been nominated by President Obama or if Hillary Clinton had won and nominated you to be CIA director, how many votes do you think you would have gotten to be confirmed as CIA director? You don’t have to answer,” Cotton said.
The next day, Susan Jones penned an article that pushed the same basic talking point from another angle, under the headline "Republican Senator: Democrats Hate Haspel Because Trump Nominated Her":
Sen. Jim Risch, an Idaho Republican, was asked by CNN if he could understand Democrats' concerns about interrogation methods used in the past that are now illegal:
"Well, sure," Risch said. "They hate anything that Donald Trump does in this town."
"The people in this town, many of them hate Trump so bad that no matter who he nominates, they're going to raise anything they can. You just hit the nail on the head, and that is that the interrogation had nothing to do with her. They're trying to get her to answer for this one. She was not involved in that," Risch said.
Well done, ladies. You have done the Trump White House a great service. The cause of journalism, however? Not so much.
