When last we left you with Brian Stelter, the notoriously fussy host of CNN’s “Reliable Sources” was getting his clock cleaned in a rather glorious way by former New York Times op/ed editor and writer Bari Weiss – a woman who her former colleagues tried to silence – who proceeded to school him big time on cancel culture after he questioned why she felt people “weren’t allowed” to say things that have effectively been declared WrongSpeak by our intellectual betters (like saying “women are women”).
But there was another interview that took place during the show Sunday that I believe deserves a lot more attention than what it’s gotten so far.
Prior to Weiss’ appearance, Stelter brought on Democrat super-lawyer Marc Elias, absolutely one of the biggest Democrat hypocrites to ever walk the face of the Earth (and with the massive ego to match) who purports to be morally opposed to partisan gerrymandering except in all the instances where he’s not.
Get this: Stelter brought on Elias, who has never met an anti-Democrat-cheating election law he didn’t want to overturn nor an election result he didn’t want reversed because it didn’t go his clients’ way, to give his thoughts on how “peddling” the so-called “Big Lie” about the 2020 presidential election “can topple democracy.”
But it wasn’t their back and forth over their supposed “commitment to election integrity” or whatever that made the interview so revealing. It was what Elias told Stelter in complimenting him for all of his efforts at combatting alleged “right-wing misinformation” that told the bigger story, in my opinion (bolded emphasis added by me):
Stelter: “So, how do you handle that, you know, intense scrutiny, that coverage, that criticism from right-wing media?”
Elias: “So, as you can tell, anyone who follows me on Twitter knows, I tend to take it head on because I think that ignoring it and this is one the things, by the way, your show does extremely well and, frankly, I wish all of the media did what your show does, is you don’t ignore the right wing misinformation just from — you take it head on.
So that’s really what I try to do. I try to call it out. I try to point out the inconsistencies and absurdities of it. But otherwise, we just need to keep our eye on the ball of focusing on protecting democracy going forward.”
Stelter: “Yeah, I appreciate what you said about this program and about, you know, some people are trying to call attention to this every day, every week. I think CNN every day is sounding these alarms.”
No joke, I felt a little sick just reading the transcript, but the video of them tripping over each other to pat themselves and each other on the back was even more nauseating in addition to being quite revealing for reasons I’ll get to in a moment (it starts at roughly the halfway point of the clip below):
George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley, a prominent critic of Elias’ tactics and who also frequently points out inconsistencies in the media’s coverage on legal matters, pointed out the massive flaw with Elias being brought on as a supposed “elections and voting laws” expert:
George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley, a prominent critic of Elias’ tactics and who also frequently points out inconsistencies in the media’s coverage on legal matters, pointed out the massive flaw with Elias being brought on as a supposed “elections and voting laws” expert:
Facts first and all that.
But beyond that, notice what happened here? You had Elias, a documented liar and fraud and very prominent mover and shaker in Democrat politics, basically saying, “Hey, Brian, thanks for all the assists you give us in trying to undercut GOP arguments on election laws, buddy!” and Stelter, also a documented liar and fraud, saying the equivalent of, “Thank you, sir. Can I have some more, please?”
And it’s also what Stelter didn’t say in response to Elias that was telling. Notice he didn’t say, “Well we combat left-wing information, too”? I mean, of course, it would be an outright lie, but he didn’t even bother trying to put on the pretense of neutrality in his response. It was like they were two kindred spirits having a meeting of the minds as to which direction they needed to take next in their war on the right.
That, in a nutshell, is the exact problem. Stelter pretends every day on his Twitter feed that neither he nor his network have a left-wing bias, yet he openly and unabashedly displayed it Sunday during a segment fretting over so-called “election lies” with a notorious Democrat peddler of election lies.
I kid you not. I mean you really couldn’t make any of this up if you tried. Then again, this is CNN, so forget about expecting anything better out of them. It’s just who and what they are, which might explain why their ratings are consistently in the toilet.