Topic: CNSNews.com
We wondered how CNSNews.com would handle things if President Trump had named Brett Kavanaugh -- whom it had repeatedly bashed as his name was floated as a replacement for retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy -- to actually fill the seat. Well, Trump did nominate Kavanaugh, and CNS is surprisingly still taking potshots at him despite its usual pro-Trump sycophancy.
CNS did start out in stenography mode, uncritically repeating Kavanaugh's assertion at the nomination press conference that "No President has ever consulted more widely, or talked with more people from more backgrounds, to seek input about a Supreme Court nomination" than Trump did in picking him-- which, given Trump's slavish devotion to a list of possible candidates given to him by the right-wing Federalist Society and Kavanaugh's placement on that list, is almost certainly not true.
CNS also cranked out articles repeating the expected conservative praise and liberal criticism of Kavanaugh, though another article highlighted a bipartisan group of senators who were taking a wait-and-see approach.
It took a few days, but the potshots returned. One article highlighted how "Several leading conservatives and libertarians strongly criticized President Donald Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to replace Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court, with some describing Kavanaugh as the 'Bush pick' and a judge who is not like Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas," while another quoted CNS figure of adoration Mark Levin complaining that "You have to assume that Kavanaugh would have voted with" Chief Justice John Roberts in supporting the constitutionality of Obamacare's tax provision.
Then CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey used his July 12 column to rehash a previous attack on Kavanaugh a few days earlier for accepting an assumption that an undocumented immigrant caught at the U.S. border has a right to an abortion. Jeffrey snarked: "Kavanaugh did not address the question of whether the government must allow her to buy a gun — or send a check to the House minority leader."
As much as Jeffrey and CNS may pick at the fringes of Kavanaugh's nomination, it's almost a certainty that they will ultimately fall in line like good little pro-Trump soldiers and promote it.
UPDATE: CNS published another Kavanaugh-tweaking article: A July 11 item by managing editor Michael W. Chapman highlighted "constitutional expert and Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz" -- whom Chapman noted just wrote a new book titled "The Case Against Impeaching Trump" -- bashing Kavanaugh's views on impeachment.
