The Toughest Job in Journalism Is Defending Trump on CNN

“Congratulations for joining the CNN household,” State of the Union anchor Jake Tapper said on-air to former Republican member of the House of Representative Sean Duffy on October 20, because the congressman commenced his duties as one of many community’s paid contributors expected to defend President Donald Trump. Tapper’s welcome was heartfelt. But had Tapper placed honesty in entrance of manners, he would have warned Duffy that he simply had volunteered for a mission—defending Trumpism on CNN—that’s extra perilous than taking the seashore at Normandy.

CNN’s paid Trump defenders—extra on them in a minute—have a tendency to self-destruct both by word or deed briefly order, making a public warning the respectable factor to do. Unwarned, Duffy used his CNN place to advance Trump’s spurious place that Ukrainians have possession of the Democratic National Committee’s server, which is “at the heart of the Russia investigation.”

But Duffy didn’t truly commit media seppuku until Tuesday when he went on CNN to query the patriotism of Ukrainian-born Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the White House insider who had simply wounded Trump with testimony within the Home’s impeachment inquiry.

“It seems very clear that [Vindman] is extremely involved about Ukrainian defense. I don’t know that he’s concerned about American policy,” said Duffy, accusing the adorned officer of twin loyalty. “We all have an affinity to our homeland, where we came from.”

Kablooey!!! Speedy pushback got here from inside CNN. Anchor John Berman requested if Duffy was saying Vindman wasn’t searching for America first. “I don’t know,” Duffy stated. CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, CNN afternoon anchor Brianna Keilar and CNN editor-at-large Chris Cillizza took extra photographs at Duffy, accusing him of anti-immigrant bigotry, as did the remainder of the media universe.

There’s an amply documented sample of Trump’s paid TV surrogates setting themselves on hearth or slowly ghosting from CNN’s airwaves. The president’s unique Tokyo Rose, Jeffery Lord, was sacked in August 2017 for tweeting the phrase “Sieg Heil!” at Media Matter’s front-man Angelo Carusone. After Lord got here Ed Martin, a St. Louis talk-show host and Trump loyalist who lost his CNN contract in January 2018 after calling fellow CNN contributors “black racists” and “rabid feminists.” Different short-termers on CNN’s pro-Trump beat embrace Jason Miller, his former marketing campaign communications director, and Paris Dennard, both of whom left the community in 2018. In early 2019, CNN dumped another pair from its payroll—former officeholders Jack Kingston and Andre Bauer—and later that yr parted methods with Trump marketing campaign and transition veteran Bryan Lanza. The Hollywood Reporter noted in August that Steve Cortes and Ben Ferguson, Trump’s newest media spear carriers, had all but disappeared from CNN.

CNN plagues us with its infinite collection of Trump surrogates as a result of the casting of the news requires proper “villains” to parry with the “heroes.” Or as CNN President Jeff Zucker put it, “You'll be able to’t run a information channel and you may’t do a show in the event you don’t speak to all sides.” That feels like a smart rationalization, however it doesn’t go to the guts of the matter. The community might interview Trump supporters without placing them on the payroll. It simply wouldn’t be as dramatic.

What makes being Trump media surrogate such a high-attrition job is that that position have to be crammed by someone near the president who is prepared to repeat, amplify and explain the racist, insulting, inflammatory and conspiratorial things the president says each day. The surrogate is hired to channel all of Trump’s awfulness. Once Trump attacked Lt. Col. Vindman on Twitter, Duffy had no real various as a paid Trump supporter but to parrot the president. So he went on air and squawked. He did his job.

If Duffy will get fired (really, I should say, “When Duffy will get fired”), it can in all probability be for seconding something outrageous Trump uttered. Though it’s completely unfair, the community will kill the messenger for delivering the message they paid him to ship, and then it's going to hire a new messenger and ultimately hearth him, too. And so forth.

The surrogates are scapegoats. CNN fires them because it will possibly’t hearth the president.

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Is anybody on TV more Cronkitesque than Jake Tapper? Recommend candidates by way of e mail to Shafer.Politico@gmail.com. My assume they’re Huntley and Brinkley. My Twitter feed thanks it’s Arnold Zenker. My RSS feed is nonetheless on hiatus.

Article initially revealed on POLITICO Magazine

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