To reinforce this spin, CNN's Don Lemon, who outed himself as a Trump-hater in an out-of-control alcohol-fueled on-camera appearance last New Year's Eve, trotted out CNN's new contributor , former Obama regime director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

CNN hit a new low – and that's saying a lot – Tuesday night in its coverage of President Trump's speech in Phoenix. The former news channel is now little more than a propaganda mouthpiece for the Deep State. On Tuesday, it used a half-dozen anti-Trump panelists, with no one representing a counter view, to introduce a new fake news meme: not only is the 45th POTUS a racist and a Nazi-sympathizer, but he is an imminent national security threat to the United States.



Don Lemon live on CNN, New Year's Eve, 2016.

Clapper's incendiary comments about Trump's speech immediately went to the top of CNN's website and led many other mainstream news reports as well. Clapper's and the other CNN commentators' tirades eclipsed any coverage of what Trump actually said in his 80-minute speech to an enthusiastic crowd of over 19,000 at the Phoenix Convention Center.



CNN.com home page screenshot, August 22, 2017, 11 P.M. PDT.

Speaking of President Trump, Clapper said:

I really question his ability, his fitness to be in this office and I also am beginning to wonder about his motivation for it. Maybe he is looking for a way out.

In its article about Clapper's appearance, CNN reported:

Clapper said he found the President's rally "downright scary and disturbing." Clapper denounced Trump's "behavior and divisiveness and complete intellectual, moral and ethical void. How much longer does the country have to, to borrow a phrase, endure this nightmare?"



Clapper on CNN.

Clapper continued to pile on. With his patina of national security expertise (and notwithstanding his obvious lie to Congress in 2013 while testifying under oath), he was accorded high expert status by program host Lemon.

Clapper also said he is worried about the President’s access to the nuclear codes. “In a fit of pique he decides to do something about Kim Jong Un, there’s actually very little to stop him,” Clapper said. “The whole system is built to ensure rapid response if necessary. So there's very little in the way of controls over exercising a nuclear option, which is pretty damn scary.”

Lemon continued to refer to Clapper’s comments after his appearance ended. The one-sided echo chamber panel members tried to one up each of their in their disdain for the president. It was only 12 days ago that CNN fired its last conservative commentator and Trump defender, Jeffrey Lord, citing as an excuse his use of a politically incorrect tweet. On Tuesday, the “Republican” on the CNN panel, a NeverTrumper named Rick Wilson, did his part to bash Trump. Wilson, by the way, revealed way back in March 2016 to the delight of the left wing media that he planned to vote for Hillary Clinton.



Rick Wilson.

Lemon, for his part, delivered several emotive rants suggesting that the sky was about to fall if Trump remains in office. Trump, Lemon said at 11:46 P.M. EDT.:

... is clearly trying to ignite a civil war in this country[.] ... If he was on my team in this newsroom and said those things [apparently referring to but not directly quoting what Trump said in Phoenix], he would be escorted out of the building.

Lemon then went on to quote and show a tweet by Ana Navarro, a Trump-hater and frequent CNN contributor:

Only possible defensible explanation for Trump's disgusting, unpresidential, narcissistic behavior, would be early onset dementia. Maybe.

Meanwhile, over at the Fox News Channel, anchor Bret Baier convened a much more fair and balanced panel after Trump's speech ended around 8:25 P.M. PDT. FNC correspondent John Roberts had the opening comment:

BAIER: All right, John. You hear these speeches. That was a stemwinder! ROBERTS: That was as good as anything I ever heard [from Donald Trump] on the campaign trail.

At 7:46 P.M. PDT, Fox News had a caption on the screen as President Trump spoke, paraphrasing what he had just said. "Pres Trump on the Media: These Are Sick People." In light of how CNN and much of the rest of the mainstream media presented the news about the evening, truer words were never spoken.

Peter Barry Chowka is a widely published author and journalist. He writes most frequently these days for American Thinker. His website is AltMedNews.net. Follow Peter on Twitter.