CNN has discarded any remaining shreds of credibility by planning and then broadcasting a totally bogus event aimed at portraying its most politically connected host as some kind of hero. What makes this exercise in propaganda so stunning is that it is easily proven to be phony by the words spoken by its purported hero.

You may recall that CNN's Chris Cuomo announced to the world that he had contracted the coronavirus weeks ago and began broadcasting his daily show from his basement, as if he were some heroic jailed dissident, exploiting his illness for all it is worth. But, perhaps slightly deranged by the lack of contact with others, he went on air April 13 on his Sirius XM radio show to vent his angst about his job at CNN (sounding a lot like a guilty conscience) and describing an encounter with a bicycle-rider who harassed him about being outside and violating his quarantine. If the incident is not fresh in your mind, you can hear it in a minute and 14 seconds here:

CNN anchor Chris Cuomo says his COVID diagnosis has made him rethink his career: "I don’t like what I do, professionally, I’ve decided … I don’t value indulging irrationality, hyper-partisanship. I don’t think it’s worth my time anymore.”pic.twitter.com/AmkUsuoATY — Alex Salvi (@alexsalvinews) April 14, 2020

There is no mistaking the fact that he was not in his basement — he was outdoors and so blatantly violating his quarantine that he was called out for it.

Yet on Monday, his employer CNN staged a fake dramatized "official re-entry" to post-quarantine life, as if he were a Chilean miner rescued from a cave-in by the efforts of a heroic rescue team digging through rock:

All right, here it is. The official reentry from the basement… This is what I’ve been dreaming of, literally, for weeks… This is the dream, just to be back up here, doing normal things.

His "official re-entry" is as phony as Rosie Ruiz's official victory in the 1980 Boston Marathon. But unlike with Ms. Ruiz, there is no official body to strip him of his title:

Crowned the women's champion when she crossed the finish line, Ruiz looked surprisingly well-rested for someone who had just run 26.2 miles in record time. Jackie Gareau, whom the crowd had cheered on as the women's leader for the last half of the race, arrived at the finish line just in time to see officials bestow the traditional laurel wreath on Ruiz. Doubts surfaced immediately. In the thousands of photos and extensive film shot at the event, Ruiz appeared only in the last half-mile. After eight days of controversy, Rosie Ruiz was stripped of her title, but she maintained her innocence and refused to return her medal.

CNN obviously thinks its audience is so stupid that the network can get away with this. Only the idiotic, ignorant, or amnesiac among its audience (admittedly, a sizable portion) would be taken in, but it is so blatant that even lefty outfits like NBC ("Chris Cuomo 'Finally' Leaves His Basement, Reunites With Family After Coronavirus Quarantine") and New York Magazine ("Chris Cuomo Airs Moment He Could 'Finally Emerge' From Basement, a Week After Leaving Basement") raised skeptical eyebrows.

Conservative media were less restrained. Breitbart's John Nolte called it the "fake newsiest fake news in all of Fakenewsdom," and the New York Post's Maureen Callahan went biblical: "Not since Lazarus has the world heard of such an unbelievable rise."

Chris Cuomo is the Rosie Ruiz of network anchors and ought to be known by that title from now on.

Photo credit: YouTube screen grab.