CNN’s Chris Cuomo is many things: excitable, easily upset, poorly informed, and unjustifiably confident. Basically, a teenager.
But one thing the CNN anchor is not is “too balanced,” as he claimed Thursday evening during a painfully pointless 30-plus-minute interview with White House counselor Kellyanne Conway.
The network’s viewers “actually get frustrated with me because they think we’re too balanced on this show,” Cuomo said with a straight face. “They don’t want me to have you on. They don’t want me to have anyone from the administration. Trust me.”
Conway responded, “They don’t want you to have me on for a simple reason, they accept, if not expect, you and the rest of CNN to be anti-Trump all day long.”
“The reason they get frustrated is they believe that you guys don’t answer questions and that you spin a lot, and you ignore what is obvious fact,” Cuomo said.
Conway retorted, “Are you going to call me a liar? Go ahead, you’re going to call me a liar?”
“If I have to, I will. If I have to, I will,” the host warned.
“Oh, really, I dare you to do it. What is it I lied about?” Conway taunted.
I’m going to stop it right there and leave it at that. There are almost 40 minutes of this mind-numbing back-and-forth, and I’m not so cruel a person as to subject you to the entire thing. There are only two points I want to make in response to the interview anyway, so let’s get to it.
First, don’t threaten to call someone a liar. Just do it if you need to. Announcing your intention to be tough is the exact opposite of, well, being tough.
Secondly, I’m sorry, what was that bit about viewers thinking CNN and Cuomo are “too balanced”? Which viewers is he talking about? His brother Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D-N.Y., doesn’t count. Let’s put CNN as a corporate entity aside for a moment and focus on Cuomo specifically.
This is the same anchor who, in the midst of mocking prayers offered in the wake of gun violence, had this to say about those who oppose pointless, knee-jerk gun control proposals:
This is the same anchor who once said that the term “fake news” is the equivalent of the n-word. Viewers definitely did not think that smart take was “too balanced.” This is the same host who once said in response to a question about a hypothetical 12-year-old girl who would prefer not to see male genitals in the locker room: “I wonder if she is the problem or her overprotective dad? Teach tolerance.”
When Cuomo says “they actually get frustrated with me because they think we’re too balanced,” who is the “they” in that sentence? Only the most hardcore #Resistance activist could watch Cuomo’s program and come away thinking he plays it too much down the middle. That’s almost certainly who he’s hearing from and to whom he is referring. If that demographic is indeed the one that he refers to simply as his viewers, then I think Cuomo just unwittingly made Conway’s entire point about the network’s feverishly anti-Trump viewership.
