As NewsBusters has previously reported, the national media (including CNN itself) have gone into an uproar over CNN’s decision to hire Sarah Isgur Flores as deputy political editor. Flores's previous jobs have included Justice Department spokeswoman, and aide to Republican presidential bids by Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, and Mitt Romney.

The topic came up on Wednesday’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, where the eponymous host discussed the hiring hysteria with media reporter for The Hill Joe Concha. Concha ended up highlighting a blaring double standard when it comes to CNN’s hiring of political operatives with “no journalism experience.”

Carlson dismissed the idea that there were “ethical implications” to hiring somebody “who publicly supported Trump,” noting that “there are quite a few former Obama staffers on the CNN payroll.”

For example, Van Jones, who served as President Obama’s “green jobs czar”, works as a CNN political commentator and host of a weekend show; Samantha Vinograd, who worked on President Obama’s National Security Council, now works as a CNN national security analyst; and Jim Sciutto, who worked as a senior adviser to President Obama’s U.S. Ambassador to China, now tries to pass himself off as an objective co-host of CNN Newsroom and chief national security correspondent.

Concha read aloud some headlines about CNN’s hiring of Isgur Flores, including one from Vox: “CNN Hires GOP Operative With No Journalism Experience to Coordinate Its 2020 Coverage,” and one from Esquire: “CNN Just Set the New Standard for Corporate Media’s Chickensh** Catering to Republicans.”

Concha included more examples of left-wing hysteria surrounding CNN’s new hire in an article he wrote for The Hill earlier in the day.

Concha then proceeded to outline a seemingly hypothetical scenario that actually turned out to be real:

But let’s put it this way, let’s say that CNN hired Valerie Jarrett’s daughter, okay, and she was assigned to cover the Trump DOJ despite having no journalism experience whatsoever. Do you think that Esquire, Vox, and all of these other publications would be going nuts right now over a hiring like that of somebody who has no journalism experience but obviously has a bias, and the answer is, we already know the answer, because that actually happened in 2017.

A bewildered Carlson made it clear that he had no idea CNN hired Laura Jarrett, the daughter of President Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett, to work at the network. Concha responded: “Of course you didn’t, it was barely reported.”

Concha brought up how the media reacted similarly when MSNBC dared to give conservative Hugh Hewitt a half-hour show on Saturday mornings: “Everybody was in an uproar because Andy Lack was trying to bring MSNBC too far to the right.”

He then continued: “that’s what happens, you hire anybody from the right in left leaning news organizations and they go nuts, because it’s not conforming to the way things have always gone; like with George Stephanopoulos or like with David Shipley, who worked for the Clinton administration, went to be on a New York Times op-ed editor.”

Carlson ultimately concluded that the media “are not really in favor of diversity.” After all, if they really cared about diversity, surely they would not mind CNN hiring Flores to “balance things out a little bit.”

A transcript of the relevant portion of Wednesday’s Tucker Carlson Tonight is below. Click “expand” to read more.